


The Faerie Ring

by DictionaryWrites



Series: The Iron Touch [1]
Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Begging, Biting, Come Inflation, Crying, Desperation, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fae & Fairies, Identity Issues, Intersex Loki (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Kissing, M/M, Magical Realism, Masochism, Multiple Orgasms, Non-Linear Narrative, Oral Sex, Painful Sex, Sex Magic, Spanking, Stomach Bulge, Surreal, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Victorian Attitudes, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:46:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Loki, the third child of Odin Borson, is trying to find his way in this strange, modern world: sickly since he was a child and struggling to get a hold of what strands of career he approaches, he happens upon a book of magic that seems to call to him, that seems to be imbued with the strangest of magnetic powers.In exploring this book, it appears he has opened himself up to outside interference: a strange being, known as the Grandmaster, begins to play upon his ailing mind as he sleeps, and Loki soon discovers this Faerie King is more dangerous than he had ever imagined.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please take the warnings seriously. This is written in a way that's intended to be surreal and a little bit unsettling, and the dubious consent is like, HUGELY dubious, really hopping back and forth over the line between dubious and non-consent. It's just another facet of the Grandmaster's manipulation of Loki, and it's dark AF.

“Loki! Stop!” Loki’s heels click as he hurriedly descends the stairs, his back straight, his chin high, the very image of masculine grace despite the speed with which he moves. He takes his coat swiftly from its hook in the entrance hall, sliding it onto his shoulders, and he places his hat upon his head: his gloves are pulled on as he exits the house, and it is only when Loki is crossing over the threshold that he hears Thor thunder down the stairs behind him. With such speed he moves, and yet with such heft behind his feet! Loki’s brother might as well be an elephant, for the speed with which he moves. “Loki!” Thor comes to fall into step beside Loki, still in his shirt sleeves, not even wearing his coat, and Loki wonders, briefly, what the neighbours must think, to see his brother in such a state of undress, yelling at Loki in the street.

“Good afternoon, brother,” Loki says, making to turn away, but Thor’s hand grasps tightly at Loki’s wrist, so tightly the skin smarts, and Loki hisses out a sound, looking at his brother. Thor’s rage has affected colour to rise in his cheeks, and his long hair has come out of its careful ties, meaning that it hangs around his face in weathered strands.

“You would to Norway?” Thor asks, his lips parted, his eyes searching – and oh, how the weight of his gaze settles on Loki’s face, makes him draw back.

“Or America. I know not yet.”

“ _Loki_ ,” Thor says, his tone wounded. “You would leave us? Leave Father and Mother?”

“You would have me as I am now?” Loki replies, his tone arch. He twists his wrist away from his brother’s grasp, staring him in the eyes and resisting the urge to curl his lip. “What would you have me do, Thor? Remain within the house, perform no labour of my own? I have not the soul to live a life of leisure, never earning my keep.”

“Then just take _work_ , Loki,” Thor says.

“What work, pray? What work is left to me, now? What work might you suggest, Thor, that our father should permit? I am not to be a journalist, nor a poet; I am not to be an artist, nor musician; teaching is beneath me; tutoring undignified; engineering too low for me, and management too high!” Loki’s voice has raised, his tone becoming slightly shrill, and swiftly does he take his tongue in check, bidding it be silent in his mouth. Thor is staring at him, still the picture of hurt, and Loki takes another step back from him. “Thor, I merely seek _peace_ – life without our father’s single eye keeping watch of me, examining me! I feel ever as an insect beneath a microscope, pinned prone upon a sheet of glass! What am I to do under such exacting scrutiny? Every breath I take is tight in my chest, lest he find some fault with the set of my lungs, the dilation of my nostrils – every step I take, I must be as graceful, yet manly, light-footed and yet strong! You don’t know what it’s _like_.”

“Father only wishes for you to be content, Loki.”

“Then he shall forever be disappointed, so long as I liv beneath his roof. Good _afternoon_ , Thor,” Loki replies, and he turns elegantly upon his heel, walking more leisurely now away from his brother. The autumn air is cool against his skin, and he takes fast upon the path, making his way quickly from the edge of the town and onto the country lanes, making his way toward the wood.

“Mr Borson, sir, good afternoon!” says a kindly voice, and Loki turns, offering a polite smile and a tip of his hat to Vesta Jameson, who cooks for the Gold family some doors away.

“Good afternoon, Vesta,” Loki says, nodding his head. “Picking apples for Fandral?”

“Young Mr Wright does love his apples, sir,” Vesta says, and yet she reaches into her basket and holds one out to him, its skin shining red in the light.

“Oh, Vesta, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Go on, sir. An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” she says, and Loki cannot help the warmth in his own smile. He had been a sickly child, often confined to bedrest, and when he and Thor had begun to spend more time with the Wrights – Fandral and Sif both – Vesta had often pushed a diet of more fruits upon Loki.

“My thanks, Vesta,” Loki murmurs, taking the kindness as it is offered, and he touches his hat once more as the two of them pass each other by. Loki holds the apple over his heart, polishing it against the dark blue of his suit jacket, and he welcomes the boughs of the forest trees over his head. His feet crunch softly on the carpet of yellow and red stretching out beneath his feet, and as he walks, he slips the apple into his pocket, sighing softly. The sound itself is taken up by the western wind, and the wind seems to echo his own exhalations, rustling through the leaves above his head and making them dance over the path.

It is the second time in as many weeks that Loki has left the dining table early, his and his father’s tempers catching like two matchsticks against one another, and Loki feels the heavy ache of guilt in his chest. His mother’s face had been as much pained as it had been shocked, and Loki sighs, momentarily removing his hat in order to run his hand through his hair.

_“What have you been doing today, my son?”_ his mother had asked, her voice quiet across the table, and Loki had glanced up cautiously from his stew. Seeing Thor and Father so engaged in conversation, he had seen fit to respond.

_“I sent an inquiry to Mr Dalish, at the docks on the Thames. I thought perhaps, come November, I might take travel to Oslo.”_

_“Oslo?”_ had come Father’s voice from the head of the table, and once more he and Loki had come to verbal blows. What is to be said for one’s life when one’s greatest enemy is one own’s father? The wind softly brushes through Loki’s hair, and he feels its cool touch upon his skin, feels the kiss of the western wind upon his brow.

“What is to be done?” he asks the forest at large, looking out into his depths. Oh, to be as a tree! Standing still, and yet to be satisfied, changing colours with the seasons… Loki inhales, smelling the scents of autumn fill his nostrils – mushrooms grow thick upon the forest’s floor, and nuts and berries are beginning to grow plump in the hedgerows. Taking up a blackberry from a thick bush, glad for the leather of his gloves, Loki slips it into his mouth, feeling its bloody burst upon his tongue, and he steps from the path.

Loki has always well-known these woods, better than his brother has – Loki has a way amongst the trees that Thor has never possessed, an ability to move silently through the underbrush and gone unseen that none of Thor’s friends have ever been able to match him with. At games of hide and seek, Loki was always an adept as a child… But what does that matter? He cannot simply hide in the woods until his life is done. Setting his jaw, Loki continues his movement over the forest floor, feeling the leaves of wild garlic kiss the hems of his trousers as he passes through, and then he comes upon a great log.

Slipping his hand into his pocket, he draws out a small knife, and files it along the groove of a crevice in the wood, flicking it outward and pulling out the treasure within: wrapped in brown paper, a _book_. Taking his seat upon the old trunk, he lays the book in his lap.

_“I bring you here, to England, with factories, libraries, cities, at your fingertips, and you would go back to Norway!”_

_“Why shouldn’t I? You plainly aren’t content with whatever I might do here! What would you expect of me, Father, to remain as furniture within this house?”_

_“By all means, find work, but something befitting your station!”_

_“My station? And what of Thor’s station?”_

Loki gently unfolds the paper that coils protectively about the book’s heavy leather binding, and he draws his fingers over the title, which had once been written in paint of gilt, and is now lost to the sands of time, rubbed away between the other books that must have once been shelved beside it. The tome is heavy, and its musty scent comes well to Loki’s sensitive nose, making Loki remember every library he has ever stepped inside – of which there have been many.

Loki looks at the old book’s cover page, tracing its decadent designs of deepest black ink with his gloved fingers: _ſpell work._ There is no date to be found anywhere in the old tome, but Loki knows it must be one hundred years old at least – he had found it in the back of an old shop in the bowels of London Town, and had been delighted by its aesthetic alone, but its content! Every page contains the ingredients, the _recipe_ , for some bewitchment or enchantment – Loki had thought it to be a piece of parody, at first, some curiosity intended for the avid occultist, but with every page he reads, it is plainly intended as a genuine guide for any student of witchcraft.

To think that such ridiculous fantasies might be entertained, in 1896! With the turn of the new century so close! And yet Loki had hidden it here in the woods. Thor would find it a curiosity, undoubtedly, but Mother so hates even the thought of spells (she abhors even English fairy tales), and Loki had not wanted to upset her by having her stumble upon it.

“What do you say?” Loki asks, whispering the words. “Shall I give one a try?” The forest whispers its encouragement, leaves rustling in the wide-reaching boughs over Loki’s head and bringing the scent of sweet berries to his nose.

_“You would rather have Thor instead of me at any venture, and you **know** it! I can take apart any one of your machines and put it back together again; I know every worker in that factory by name; I can recite the books from memory, and still you would favour him over me! Just admit it!”_

_“I will admit to nothing except foolishness, thinking my youngest son might amount to anything at all!”_

“Spell to reveal a changeling,” Loki murmurs, settling on a page at random. The wind rises suddenly, coming in such a burst that it knocks Loki’s hat from his head, and he lets out a short, surprised sound, setting the book aside and leaning over the trunk to reach for it… Here, he stops. 

There is a curve of mushrooms, starkly white compared to the carpet of yellows, reds and greens, about the one side of the trunk. Loki frowns, tilting his head slightly to the side – he had been here but two days before, and there had been no such fungal sprout. Turning his head, he sees there are more mushrooms curving around the old log he takes for his seat, and Loki quickly comes to his feet.

White mushrooms surround his log, his _sanctum_ , in a clean, well-established ring. Loki feels his blood run cold in his veins, chilling him from within, and he presses his lips tightly together. A _silly_ superstition, to be sure, and yet since he was a very young boy his mother had warned him against stepping into faerie rings, whether they were formed of mushroom or grass, lest he be whisked away!

A stupid thought, a silly thought… Had he not just been decrying witchcraft? And yet here he is, fearing of faeries and monsters at his heels? Steeling himself, Loki sits upon the old log once more, taking the book up. The wind has turned the pages, and Loki’s gaze settles upon the new page.

“An offering to a Faerie,” he reads aloud, his voice low. “ought be made with the greatest diffidence. The Faeries are fickle beings, notoriously Hot of blood, and they might take Offence at any Slight.” Loki half-expects the laughter of the trees once again, but it doesn’t come, and he looks up. He looks about the wood, seeing it as unchanging as before, sees the wind rustling the leaves softly, and yet…

He realises now what has changed.

There is no sound at all. He hears not the rustle of the leaves; he hears not the song of the birds; he hears not even his own heartbeat, his own breaths! What eerie silence this is, what uncanny quiet!

“Hello?” he calls, but although he feels the weight of the word upon his tongue, although he feels even its vibration in his mouth, he hears nothing, nothing, nothing! Breathing somewhat faster, Loki leans over, taking up his book and clasping it tightly to his chest. Whatever force it is – be it fate, or divinity, or even faerie-magic – he feels his gaze drawn downward, and he looks to the mushrooms over which he had (so foolishly! So unknowingly!) crossed to reach his wooden seat, and there, _there_ , shooting up from the ground like so many infernal geysers are bursts of blood! It spatters in thick red upon his dark shoes, upon the hems of his blue trousers, and Loki feels fear strike terror into his heart: clutching his book tight to himself as a shield, he begins to run, his feet pounding on the ground.

He is not so far into the woods, and he knows them as well as anything, and he runs until the path toward the orchard is within sight, and yet he feels, he feels without looking, without knowing, that something is in his pursuit. The very hairs on the back of his neck, thin and light and often unnoticed, stand on their end, and he cannot bear to imagine what he might see if he turns his head to look!

Loki imagines what is following him, some slavering beast whose breath is hot upon the nape of his neck, its snapping jaws so very close, and then he feels his foot hook about some unexpected root as he takes a step, and he cries out in fear and shock alike as he loses his footing, landing hard upon the ground. Closing his eyes tightly and feeling himself tremble with his sudden fright, he presses his face into the clay-rich dirt, its scent filling his nose, and yet—

There is no snapping jaw upon him, wrenching his throat from his neck. There is no monster’s claw upon him, ripping him from belly to chest. There is nothing. Loki sits up, looking with staring eyes about himself, and yet he spies nothing out of the ordinary – the trees rustle above his head, the birds sing, and close by he can even hear the soft babble of the stream that runs between the forest and the orchard.

Sighing, Loki puts his dirty face into his hands, feeling sweat shine well upon his skin, and then he takes up his book and his hat both. If he is shocking himself within these simple woods, it is a sign he ought soon home, and to bed…

And then what? To argue with Father? To console Mother? To make way to Oslo, or else New York?

“If only magic were real,” Loki mutters to himself, wiping dust and dirt away from the cover of his book and wrapping its paper around it again. “Father could hardly fault me then, could he, Wood? Just snap my fingers, and there—” Loki snaps his fingers, and his eyes are stunned by a sudden flash. Loki stares at his own gloved hand, tightening his grip on the book against his left hip. “Be fire,” he continues, in a whisper. It is the worst of habits to talk to oneself, he knows, but this… Loki snaps his fingers again.

Nothing happens. Even the sound is dulled by the leather.

Removing the glove, Loki puts his hand to his forehead, feeling for a temperature – undoubtedly, he is a little more warm than he ought be. And yet this strange turn: moments of deafness, and now seeing sparks where there are none!

Sighing, he puts his glove on once more, and begins the walk home.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki sleeps ill that night. He tosses and turns in his bed, his skin hot to the touch and his flesh feverish, and drink as he might from the jug of water beside his bed, twice he must call for his footman to refill it. By morning, Loki is laid out within his bed, his skin chalky in colour, and Mother sits beside him, soothing his hot brow with cool cloths and fussing over him.

“Oh, Loki,” she murmurs. “You ought not have walked in the woods, in such inclement weather—”

“It was a fine day,” Loki replies, his voice hoarse.

In the open door of Loki’s bedroom, he sees the shadow of his father, hovering in the doorway. Will he enter, Loki wonders? Will he face his son even as he lays abed, sick as a dog?

The shadow passes away: Loki thought so.

“Sleep, my child,” Frigga murmurs, and Loki lets his eyes close, doing his best to sleep some more.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

_Loki_ , the east winds whisper. _Loki, Loki! Play with us! Dance among the leaves!_ Loki dances not. Standing in a clearing, his bare feet settled in the blossoms that come up around his soles, he surveys the wood about him, from the crystal-clear waters of the spring to the tall trees. How tall are they? Their trunks are as wide as water wheels, and when Loki looks up he finds they are as all as the great sequoias of America, ending far, far above his head.

Loki feels he is staring into the depths of the very sky.

_Loki,_ the west winds murmur, gentler than the east winds, _Won’t you come and swim with us? Won’t you cool your feet in the waters?_

Loki moves not. His feet, pale white and shining in the wan, spring sun, are cool enough as they are.

_My friend_ , says a low voice, resonant and deep, _Won’t you come to our festivities when September reaches its end?_ Loki frowns. A party? At the end of September?

_I haven’t the time,_ he says. _I will soon back to school…_ No, wait. Loki has not been a schoolboy in a decade at least.

_My friend_ , replies the voice. Loki feels a hand brush his shoulder, but when he looks, no such hand is there. _Your reticence wounds me. Are we not amiable? Do you disdain my company?_

_Not at all, sir,_ Loki replies, and yet he is only being polite: he knows this fellow not at all from another, and he knows not enough of him to disdain or seek out his company. _Merely that I am busy_.

_Let me give you a wager._

_A wager?_

_A wager._

_I am not a betting man,_ Loki says, politely: he tries to turn away, to walk away from this strange fellow, but though forests often give Loki the way of them with ease, this forest is not to be charmed by Loki’s soft voice or careful tread. It turns itself around and around, and Loki is lost within its bounds. _Please, sir, I would not stoop to such digrace._

_A game, then? Just a game?_

_And the stakes?_

_No stakes!_ The man, voiced and yet faceless, laughs softly. _You do not trust me._

_I do not put my faith in strangers, sir_ , Loki replies, even bowing to assuage his impoliteness, and he attempts to turn again, but founds himself grabbed at the shoulders, pinned up against one of these mighty red trees by his very throat: an invisible hand so grasps him!

_I cannot breathe_ , Loki whispers. _And yet speak I must_.

_Pray, my friend, only play with me. No one has such magic as you._ Loki feels his skin flush hot, hot— the fever! Where is he? Is he as yet feverish? If he has a fever, he ought not be wandering in this strange forest, let alone without his shoes – oh, he shall catch his death!

_I have no magic, sir._

_You have everything,_ the voice replies, and Loki moans quietly, feeling the forest bleed from his vision as he turns in his bed.

“Lady Frigga, I beg of you, keep back,” says a deep, honeyed voice Loki knows all too well. “Your son is delirious with fever.”

“Heimdall,” Loki says in a low voice, and when his hand reaches, a large hand clasps upon his own. Heimdall’s palm is cool to the touch, and Loki coughs, quietly. “Am I dying?”

“No, my prince,” the doctor whispers. What a strange thing to call him. Is this Heimdall, or the fever speaking?

“Do you know, Heimdall,” Loki whispers back, feeling his delirium loosen his tongue, feeling his hair cling sweat-slick to his scalp. What must he look like? “I had a dream where you could see all… Can you?”

“I can see you, Loki,” the doctor whispers. His golden eyes become honey-coloured for a moment, and for a second his dark skin seems much lighter, painted with blue. Loki snatches back his hand.

“You are _not_ my doctor,” he says harshly, and then darkness encompasses his vision once again, his head tipping back upon the sheets.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki is out amongst the fjords, sitting alone on a snowy peak, and he looks at the sky above him. The air is clean and cold against his skin, and yet Loki shies not away from it, instead feeling its embrace as one might take a kiss from a relative, feeling the warmth of its feeling if not of its touch. The sky is an array of colours, spread out like so much dye in water, and Loki sighs as he looks up at it.

_Aurora Borealis,_ his books call it, and oh, what pinks, what greens, what blues and reds!

_It’s not as beautiful as you,_ says a voice, and Loki acts without thinking – imperiously waving his hand, the voice chokes, gasping for air.

“Disturb me not,” he says. For the first time in a long time, his words leave his mouth instead of bursting upon the air half-formed, made only of thought and with little breath behind them.

_Ooh, you’re, ah, a feisty one. Ha._ Loki frowns, turning his head, but there is no figure where the voice had come from. Slowly, Loki raises his hand again, but the voice, so strange as it is, does not return.

Loki is permitted the silence of the fjords, the skies opening above his head, and he might sit back and bask in their majesty.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

“Drink this,” Heimdall says softly, pressing a bowl to his mouth, and Loki parts his lips, letting the steeped tea settle on his tongue. Swallowing, Loki feels the bitterness of the strange tea settle on his lips and slide easily down his throat, and he feels a little energy come to him, feels his eyes open.

“Heimdall?” he says. “Did Mother call for you?”

“Yes,” Heimdall answers. Loki watches his dark, steady hands as Heimdall pours forth another bowl of the bitter tea, and he allows the doctor to bring it to his lips, drinking down the stuff. It is a medicinal drink he had oft-consumed in his youth, so prone as Loki had been to strange turns and illnesses – he knows not what the ingredients may be, but he enjoys the bitter taste of it somewhat, and he wonders vaguely if this tea is ever drunk for its taste alone.

“I don’t know what it was,” Loki says mildly. “Yesterday, I just took a walk in the woods… I don’t know, Heimdall. I must have been somewhat unwell even as I left – I took a strange turn upon my promenade.”

“What do you mean?” Heimdall asks, setting the cup aside. His voice is quiet, but not judgemental – as ever, Heimdall speaks with a voice that is low and steeped in honey, and yet feels not falser for it.

“I found I had stepped in a faerie ring – you know, of mushrooms? – and it gave me an awful shock. Not that I really _believe_ in such things, but it sent my very mind awhirl. The sounds seemed to stop and start about me, and I felt myself growing feverish as I came toward the path…” Loki frowns, furrowing his brow as he tries to remember. “I was running, I think. Running from something in the wood. A wolf, I thought at the time.”

“Another cup of tea, Loki,” Heimdall says gravely, and Loki raises his chin, his eyebrows raising slightly.

“Oh? Really? Alright.” Loki’s jaw is slack, and a little of the tea spills upon his chin as he sips from the cup, but once more he drains it to its base, and Heimdall looks down at him, his golden eyes serious. “Do you believe in magic, Heimdall?” Heimdall’s eyes widen slightly, his dark lips parting.

“Magic?” he repeats, slowly.

“I was reading,” Loki murmurs softly, aware of the dream-like quality his voice is taking on. “Spells, magic, enchantment…” Loki feels his eyes droop closed, feeling sleep take careful hold of him again, and he is adrift on a sea of blackness.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki is sitting up in his bed, a book in his lap. Outside, the sun is dim, but even that light had seen fit to make his sensitive head ache, and thus he has carefully shut the curtains. His back against the cushioning of his headboard, he sips leisurely from a mug of tea, a tray of uneaten porridge upon his lap, and he is doing his best to assuage the room from spinning.

The door opens, and Loki glances up, expecting his footman to take away his breakfast tray, but he sees only Thor. “May I?” he asks, softly, and Loki nods his head, gesturing to the end of his bed. Thor closes the door carefully behind him, slowly sitting down on the foot of Loki’s bed. His hand settles on Loki’s ankle through the sheets, patting the flesh, and Loki gives his brother a wan smile.

“I’m fine, Thor,” Loki says. “You needn’t worry so.”

“You’ve not been this ill since we were very young indeed,” Thor murmurs, gravely. “Nearly a month you have been abed, now! The very month of September has passed you by like a speeding train.” _At the end of September_ , echoes a sing-song voice in the back of Loki’s throat, but Loki ignores it, and he reaches for his brother’s hand, taking it and squeezing it in his own. “How do you feel?”

“Well enough,” Loki answers.

“Can you walk?”

“Not without swiftly meeting the floor,” Loki admits, and Thor’s concern shows on his face like a wave upon a shore, passing swiftly over his eyes, his brows, his mouth, before being washed away again as he hides it. “It is only what I deserved. Leaving the dining table with such a tantrum as the wind beneath my sails… Never have I been so lacking in decorum.”

“I wish you were less concerned with decorum,” Thor mutters, releasing his hand. His hands come to settle in his lap, and Loki’s own hands cup the warmth of his tea, feeling its pleasant heat radiating out against his chest, his palms. “They found an apple in your coat pocket. It was near rotted.”

“The apple,” Loki says softly. “Vesta gave it to me – I passed her as I walked toward the wood,” he explains. “I ought have mentioned it.”

“You have been in a state of fever and delirium for near two weeks,” Thor says, his thin nerves fraying to break. “How could you have mentioned it!?” Loki stares at his brother, surprised at the sudden burst of temper, and Thor rubs one hand over his mouth, slowly. “I merely wake in the night, brother, with visions of you on a ship to Oslo, or to New York – what if you had boarded one, and became ill upon the seas? You might have died!”

“Thor,” Loki says softly, but Thor’s ruddy cheeks are ever ruddier.

“Or if you had fallen in the wood! We might not have found you until it was too late, and I—”

“It does you no good to torment yourself with such thoughts,” Loki says, doing his best not to chide as much as he might wish to. “I am here, Thor, and I will soon be to health once more.” Standing from the bed, Thor comes closer, and Loki is surprised – touched, even – when Thor drags him into a desperate embrace, his strong arms tight about Loki’s back, clutching at him as if he believes Loki is to die on the morrow. “Thor,” Loki whispers.

“It would have been my fault,” Thor murmurs. “You said it yourself at dinner that night: I am too accepting of Father’s treatment of you, too willing to allow it to pass over my head, I—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Loki mutters. “Many times you have defended me to Father, and besides, he’s _right_. It has naught to do with you, Thor, I merely said that in a fit of temper. How could a man like me be the head of a factory? What if I fainted amidst the machines? Has scarcely ever a year passed, Thor, where I was not struck down by my invalidity? My weak lungs, my ailing heart?” Thor grips Loki all the harder, and Loki sighs, softly, pressing his forehead to the warm crook of his brother’s shoulder.

“Shall I read to you?” Thor asks.

“You need not waste away your days at my bedside,” Loki murmurs as Thor draws away. “Pray, go to the Wrights – young Sif—”

“Perhaps from Thomas Hobbes?” Thor suggests, taking up a book at random from Loki’s desk. “You’ve always found his philosophy comfortable for bedtime reading.”

“You’re thinking of Kant,” Loki murmurs, and yet warm indulgence settles in his chest. “Take this tray from me, would you?”

“You’ve scarcely eaten anything,” Thor says, staring down at the bowl.

“The thought of eating any of it turns my stomach, I’m afraid,” Loki murmurs, his tone apologetic, and Thor takes up the tray, setting it upon the desk. Loki watches him in the dim light, and he says, “Have you been having dreams as of late, Thor?”

“Dreams? Yes, brother: I often have dreams of this or that.” Thor’s curiosity shines in his eyes as he looks down at Loki, and Loki opens his mouth, but then closes it again. He finds he has little to say. Dreams? Why had he brought that up? “Have you been dreaming?”

“I think so,” Loki says. He tastes his own uncertainty on his tongue. “Pray, do leave me, brother. I would sleep a little longer.”

“Shall I call for Doctor Heimdall?” Thor asks, reaching out: the backs of his knuckles touch Loki’s forehead, but Loki’s own flesh is cool to the touch, and the clammy damp of his fever has long-since gone away.

“No, no,” Loki murmurs, shaking his head. “I shall just sleep another few hours…” Thor takes Loki’s cup from him, setting it onto the desk, and Loki lies down on his side, hearing the soft creak as the door opens and then clicks shut once again. Loki lies down in the dim light his bedroom, and beneath his bed, he feels the magnetic power of that book of spells, that he had so secreted in the woods…

He ought not have brought it into the house. If his mother happens upon it, oh! How upset she will be. And yet! And yet… Loki lets his arm come down from the bed, reaching beneath his bed, and he traces the leather beneath his fingers, feeling for that illegible gilt writing he so loves upon the cover.

Sleep comes to him all at once, assailing his weak body, and he curls his arms about his pillow, gripping it tightly.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki stands in a clearing. His feet are bare, and he is still clad in his bedclothes, but the air is warm, and the weakness he had been feeling not long ago seems to have left him entirely. The scent of the air is all wrong for September: there are summer fruits thick upon the air, and there is a heat to the wind that runs itself through his hair.

“Are you there?” he asks.

“Uh huh,” the voice answers. Loki recognises that voice, and yet when he attempts to match a face to it, nothing comes.

“I don’t believe you,” Loki says. His voice is not unkind: he speaks politely, but simply, and he hears the frown in the silence between him and the voice.

“What? What do you mean, you don’t _believe_ me?”

“I don’t see you,” Loki says. “Therefore, I refuse to believe you are there. Perhaps you are projecting your voice through some manner of stagecraft I am unfamiliar with – perhaps you are using some sort of machinery, but either way, you are not here.”

“I _am_ ,” the voice insists, and when Loki turns to meet it, he sees a figure. He is taller than Loki had expected, with silver hair combed back from his head and somehow affected to spike up in a strange shape; he wears kohl at his eyes and blue pigment, too, even paint upon his shaven chin. Wearing the golden robes of some priest of old, he seems at odds with the normality of this simple, English countryside. “There. You can, ah, you can see me now. What do you think?”

“Taller than I expected,” Loki answers. “What ought I call you?”

“The Grandmaster,” says the voice, immediately. Although Loki sees the face it is attached to, and even sees the face’s lips move, the two seem unconnected, somehow. This thought makes Loki smile.

“I see,” he says. “I am dreaming.” The Grandmaster frowns.

“May I have _your_ name?” he asks: Loki laughs. The sound is low and resonant, echoing in the emptiness of the clearing and sounding off into the forest around them, and when the Grandmaster takes a step to the left, Loki mirrors him, stepping right. The two of them take careful, stealthy steps upon the forest floor, circling one another. If Loki were to _give_ this man his name, why, undoubtedly he would take it – and Loki needs his name for other things, as yet.

“You may not,” Loki replies. “But I will tell you what I should like to be called, if you wish.” The Grandmaster grins, showing all his teeth. They are very white, and not so sharp as they should be. Not so sharp as they _truly are_ , Loki bets. “Call me Loki.”

“Loki,” the Grandmaster repeats, and the sound of his name seems to thrum through Loki’s very heart, affecting a tingling sensation within him. Here, in this deserted clearing, barefoot and still in his nightclothes, Loki feels the first twinge of fear. “You crossed the faerie ring.”

“I did,” Loki agrees. Fear blooms in his chest like so many wildflowers, and Loki stumbles slightly in his circling of the Grandmaster: for Loki’s foibles, the Grandmaster takes a step closer. He smells of the stars themselves – whatever they smell like. “But you put it there. And you hid it before I crossed it, didn’t you? That seems a rather nasty trick.”

“Why won’t you come to my party?” the Grandmaster asks, his lips pressing out comically into a pout. “You should, you know. You’ll just, ah, you’ll just _love_ it.”

“I’ve never cared for parties,” Loki replies, stopping in his circling, and the Grandmaster closes the gap between them. He really _is_ tall, looking slightly down at Loki, and the lack of distance between them seems most improper. Loki is not dressed at all, after all, and… and the Grandmaster’s hand…

Loki stares down at his hip. The Grandmaster’s hand is splayed across it, the fingers spread wide as if the Grandmaster wishes to touch all the flesh he can in one movement, the grip of his thumb against Loki’s hipbone positively possessive, and Loki feels all the breath leave his lungs at once. Such _heat_ , such wondrous _heat_ , oh – has Loki always been as cold as he feels right now? Has he always been so desperate for such a wonderful warmth of touch? The Grandmaster leans so close, now, so close, that his lips ghost Loki’s own.

“I can’t,” Loki whispers. “I _won’t_. Two men oughtn’t stand so close, sir: you forget yourself.”

“I’m not exactly Oscar Wilde,” replies the Grandmaster, and Loki claps his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. Mr Wilde’s trial had just concluded the year before, and his name is spoken in hushed voices in the Borson home, when Thor is amongst his friends and they might speak freely – as freely as one might, within the lines of propriety.

“Sir!” he says, indignant, and the Grandmaster steps even closer, so that their chests are together, and Loki feels he might well melt – oh, _oh!_ What warmth comes from the Grandmaster, what splendid energy that crackles on Loki’s skin and makes him feel so beautifully full, so _healthy!_

“Ask me to kiss you,” the Grandmaster whispers. “I, uh, I won’t. If you don’t ask.”

“I couldn’t ask for such a thing,” Loki whispers.

“Why not? You’ve asked before.” Loki feels his cheeks flush red with shame – he remembers his school days, letting other boys, older boys, lay soft attentions on his cheeks, let them admire his prettiness – for a boy. And then, _just once_ , Loki recalls the way he had stepped through some gambling den in search of Thor, attempting to find his brother before the constabulary happened upon them both ( _for Loki had tipped them off)_ , and a man had pressed Loki against the wall, his thigh pressed hard between Loki’s legs and making him gasp. “Oh, you think I wouldn’t know? Haha, everything’s, ah, up for grabs in _dreams_ , Loki.” And there is the Grandmaster’s thigh, hard and unwavering between Loki’s own, and Loki lets out a shuddering little noise.

“I beg of you sir, don’t—”

“Don’t what?” the Grandmaster asks, and his thigh presses ever higher: Loki’s length is erect within his trousers, and he whimpers as he feels himself become slightly _wet_ at his head, oh, _oh!_ He flinches away as best he can, but he is trapped in place by some magic unknown, and the warmth of the Grandmaster’s body – Loki can hardly bare to pull away from him. “I just, ah, I just really _like_ you, Loki. Won’t you let me show you?”

“You oughtn’t,” Loki whispers. “It’s… It’s _sinful_ , sir, and I—” Loki moans, and Lord help him, the sound is not as pained as it ought sound. The Grandmaster’s hands grip both of Loki’s hips now, and all he had done was pull Loki’s hips flush against him, serving to grind Loki’s shame against his leg ever harder, ever more so! “Grandmaster, please.”

“Please what?” the Grandmaster asks, and again he pulls upon Loki’s hips, and Loki feels his movements stutter: his knees growing weak, Loki is forced to grasp at the front of the Grandmaster’s strange and splendid robes. “Ask me to kiss you, Loki. Ask me to kiss you, and I’ll stop.” The Grandmaster’s hands are slipping beneath his bed clothes now, his fingers seeking out the twin curves of Loki’s buttocks, and then his thumbs dip _between—_

“Kiss me!” Loki exhales, desperately, fear and arousal twisting themselves like a Celtic knot within him. “Please, sir, I beg of you, _stop_ : kiss me, kiss me if you must, please, and don’t—” The Grandmaster’s lips are on his own, his lips electrifyingly hot, his tongue sweeping against Loki’s own in long, easy strokes. When the Grandmaster’s mouth finally leaves his own, Loki hears himself sob, feels the tears slide down his cheeks as hot streaks, and Loki knows not if he cries for relief or loss.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Waking in his bed, soaked with sweat, Loki gasps to himself. He feels his hardness within his legs, feels it turning soft, and with shame (oh, Lord, oh _Lord_ ), he realises there is a stickiness, a slickness, between his thighs, upon his belly.

Loki touches his cheeks, but there are no tears there – _that_ had been reserved for his dream-self.

And there. There! On his pillow, what?

_Come to the wood on September 30 th. Wear as little as you dare_.

Loki reaches for the parchment, which has been written upon with ink as blue as the beach-near sea, and it is real. It is _real_ , and not a mere figment of some fever-dream – it is as real as anything. It is as real as the stickiness on his thighs.

Loki feels sick, and he crumbles the parchment in his hand, ringing the bell to summon his footman. He must to a bath, _immediately_ , must scrub himself of these thoughts, and yet, and yet… Loki thinks of the Grandmaster’s mouth on his, their tongues together. And Loki had _asked_ for it – how could he do such a thing?

_But what if he had continued?_ asks the voice in Loki’s head. _What if he had tainted you any further?_

_What if you had liked it?_ whispers a voice that is not his own, and Loki feels the want to cry all again, fear running through his veins like so much blood. September 30 th – that is scarcely two days away!

He must prepare.


	2. Chapter 2

“Loki!” Father says as Loki enters the dining room, and Loki stops in the doorway, his head inclined slightly forward. His father’s single eye is wide and blue in the soft light of the candles made up for dinner, and his jaw is slack as he looks at him. “You’re out of bed so soon?”

“I thought it best,” Loki replies, politely bowing his head to the older man, and he watches as one of the younger servants scrambles to set an extra place at the table. “I am quite well, Father.” Loki is pale as a sheet and his skin still has a light sheen of sweat upon its surface, but he is breathing evenly, and it does not dizzy him to stand: nonetheless, he is glad to lower himself into the seat beside his brother, and he feels Thor’s hand reach for him, touching against his neck for just a moment. “Please, worry not on my account. I feel leagues better.”

Father and Mother share a concerned glance, but then Father nods his head once more, and Loki settles himself into eating his meal. Ordinarily, he is quiet at the dinner table – it has long-since been his habit to keep his activities to himself – so he simply contents himself with listening to the conversation between Thor and their parents.

Thor speaks on Sif Wright, as he is wont to do. He praises her dark hair, and her shining eyes, and the strength with which she comports herself. Father mildly mutters that perhaps if she lacked the strength of a cart horse, her arms would not be quite so masculine and heavy with muscle; Thor delightedly declares those arms make her all the more beautiful, as if Father’s criticism means naught at all.

Loki thinks upon the invitation on his pillow. _Come to the wood,_ it had said, but at what time? In the morning? At night? He knows not. Surely, at night – this is a party, after all, a faerie revel, but how is he to take his leave of the house once the sun has set? Such a thing would be wildly improper. But then, what isn’t improper about this whole situation?

He shall arrive at sunset. Yes, indeed – he shall take a promenade some hour before the sun is due to fall below the horizon, and he shall simply have to be late in his return. _If he returns_.

“Have you been reading much, Loki?” Mother asks, and Loki glances up from his soup.

“Some,” he says, doing his best not to be overly evasive. “I confess, I have found it difficult to concentrate on the page as of late: the words verily swim before my eyes, but I hope to be better suited to it. I plan to read some in the coming weeks, and balance my study with short promenades, the better to mend my health.”

“I shall accompany you,” Thor says cheerfully, and Loki freezes in his seat.

“Oh, you needn’t, brother,” he says, smiling despite the sudden fear that strikes his heart. What would happen, he wonders, were he to arrive at the wood with Thor at his side? What would be done to him? No, no. The very thought is inconceivable. “Certainly, I shall be fine alone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thor chides, shaking his head. “Loki, I could hardly expect you to sojourn alone, and time spent with my brother is no time wasted.”

“You warm my heart, brother,” Loki says wanly, and he feels his heart sink in his chest. What now?

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

It is raining outside. Loki listens to the patter of rain against the wide windows and against the dark roads, and he sits cross-legged upon his window seat, a smoking jacket thick upon his shoulders. Its padded fabric does much to keep him warm, and he is grateful indeed for it – the window is made of very thick glass, the better to keep out the cold, but he finds himself prone to shivers and shakes now that he is away from his bed.

The book rests heavy in Loki’s lap, and he studies the pages with care.

Despite his ailing health in childhood, Loki had not been a well-behaved child. Outwardly studious, undoubtedly, and the very image of good behaviour and good breeding, but that was only because he wasn’t caught whenever he chose to stray.

Loki has skills unbefitting a young man of his station: he is an admirable pickpocket, and he is skilled at working his way out of difficult situations. A natural gymnast, Loki finds scaling buildings no more difficult than climbing trees, and many times he had moved with fleet foot from his boarding school lodgings, or crept from this very house. If he isn’t to take his leave for the wood upon his promenade, then—

Loki leans toward the glass of the window, and he looks down against the wall. A trellis is pinned beneath his window, and roses grow upon it, coiling their way through the criss-crossing pieces of white-painted wood. Loki hasn’t used the trellis to leave his bedroom for over a _decade_ , and certainly he is a great deal larger and heavier since last he used that method, and yet—

Well. What better option has he?

Loki’s gaze flits back to the page.

“ _The Faerie is concerned, above all else, with Politeness and with Manners. Although they are beings of Chaos, made as they are of all that Nature should cast aside and being as they are the disgraced children of Eve, they Seek to create Order in their life through matters of social polity. Faeries have complex social structures, with a regimented understanding of class and status, and any member of good standing should follow every Rule of polite Society._

_One should take Care not to give into Social Nicety too easily, however: some Rules of the Fae are not mirrored in our own society, and one must take care not to sign a contract through ignorance. One’s name, for example, is the representation of one’s soul in Faerie society and therefore one must take care not to give it away – better instead that one should say what one wishes to be called, and to not “give” one’s name to a fellow.”_

Loki has read this page before. It is how he knew not to give the Grandmaster his name, and yet… Loki has studied this page a dozen times, hoping it will reveal more to him, for there are scarcely three pages in the entire book on the subject of Faeries and how best to approach them, how best to deal with them.

It is a book about practical magic, after all – what _poppycock_ – and not about mixing in foreign societies.

Faeries, the book maintains, delight in music and dancing of any kind, as well as sport, and bets, and violence. As much as Faeries maintain an outward appearance of polity and gentility, it is little more than an outward appearance, for their lust for blood sport runs deep within them, and they are creatures of primal desire.

Loki thinks of the Grandmaster’s finger dipping between his buttocks, pressing, pressing—

Loki coughs, delicately, against his hand, and turns the page.

“ _A Spell to Douse a Fire._

_Hold one’s left hand open, with the palm to the ceiling, and imagine the flame , complete, against ones fingertips. Imagine not only the sight of it, but also the feel of hot flames licking the skin, the scent of the oil or charred wood in one’s nostrils, the very soul of the burn upon one’s skin._

_Very slowly, close the palm, until one is stifling the flames with the clench of the fingers and thumb, and so shall the true flame mirror the act.”_

Loki turns his head to the four oil lamps that keep his bedroom lit, and he focuses on the one closest to him, seeing its golden haze shine out from within the dirtied glass. It is ridiculous, most ridiculous to attempt _magic_ – oh, certainly, Loki had his childhood fantasies of being a sorcerer, playing at Merlin where his brother played at King Arthur or the Knight Gawain, but he never _believed_ he could be so.

Loki sets out his palm.

He imagines the oil lamp’s heat in his hand, considering the way its heat would creep over his flesh, imagining the way it would slowly begin to settle liquid hot within his palm. He imagines the regular set of the flame, so different to a fire in a grate that crackles and dances: no, the flame from an oil lamp is ever still, roaring quietly as it burns the fuel that is thrown out to meet it. He smells the scent of burning oil heavy in his nostrils, that coal-tang, and he closes his palm – not slowly, as the spell had instructed – but all at once.

Enveloped suddenly in darkness as every light in the room douses itself at once, Loki lets out a soft, disbelieving breath.

When he opens his palm, the lamps flicker back to life.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

“Fandral,” Loki says softly as he stands upon the stair, and Fandral looks up at him, smiling his dandy’s smile. Fandral is a handsome young man, the same age as Loki – they were desk mates at school – and Loki carefully descends the stairs, his left hand upon the bannister as he makes his way down. “Mary said you were here for me. Pray, why?”

“I am told you must take promenades for the sake of your health,” Fandral says lightly. “The rain will not relent for much longer – I thought I ought invite you whilst I were able.” Loki hesitates. Fandral’s charming smile grows wider. “Come now, Loki. For the sake of your _health_.”

“Very well,” Loki says quietly, and he gives a polite nod of his head. He draws his gloves onto his hands, then exchanging his smoking jacket for his overcoat and hat, and he allows Fandral to take his arm. It ought embarrass him, to interlink their arms as if Loki is some young woman, but Fandral is a perceptive gentleman, and seeks only to ensure that if Loki’s knees are to weaken that he does not fall. Fandral’s hand settles over Loki’s, for a scant moment, and Loki says, “Take care, Mr Wright, that you overstep not.”

So impugned, Fandral draws his hand away.

They step out into the street, and although the rain has only just faded away, the sun is shining so brightly one might believe it had never fallen, were the streets not still shining with moisture. Fandral’s pace is slow and even, and he holds an umbrella at his side as if it is a walking cane, just in case.

“I was most worried when you were taken ill,” Fandral says mildly. “Scarcely a day would pass when your brother was not in our drawing room, seeking comfort at my sister’s breast.”

“Comfort was not all he sought, I’d wager,” Loki mutters, and Fandral chuckles. Fandral’s body is warm beside Loki’s own, and Loki remembers long nights in the boarding school dormitories, where Fandral would slide into Loki’s bed alongside him, and Loki’s heart would soar at the contact, even as he caught fast Fandral’s wandering hands. He has the measure of Fandral Wright, no matter how much he considers him a friend. “Did you lose sleep over me, Fandral?”

“Always, my friend,” Fandral says quietly, and there is little of his usual flirtatious note. “Doctor Heimdall was convinced you would die this time, you know. He did not say as much, but I read his fear in his features much as you read the words of your books. Never have I seen him so afraid.”

“He grows too attached to his patients, I fear,” Loki murmurs, “particularly the sickly ones.”

“It is difficult for anyone not to grow attached to you, Loki.” Loki laughs.

“Is this the medicine you bring me, Fandral? Flattery and false words?”

“As good a medicine as any.” Fandral purrs the words, It is improper, Loki supposes, for him to associate so freely with Fandral, being as Loki knows about Fandral what no one else does, but then, they share their secrets, do they not? The difference between them, Loki supposes, is that Fandral indulges his unsavoury desires, and Loki does not. Loki finds it in himself, nonetheless, to forgive him – is it his place to do so? Loki thinks not. But Loki has done a great many things when it wasn’t his place to do so. “They say you took ill from the wood.”

“A passing influenza, I’m certain,” Loki says airily. What would Fandral say, Loki wonders, if Loki told him of the magic he has been studying, of the monstrous Fae who has made a home for himself in Loki’s dreams? What would Fandral say were Loki to tell him that when Loki attempted a spell from his leatherbound book, it worked?

 _He would say you were mad_ , says a quiet voice in the back of his mind.

 _He wouldn’t,_ says another. _You know he wouldn’t. He would jump for joy at the thought of magic as something real, something tangible, and he would write you so sweet a poem that you eyes would water and your heart would burst from your chest._ _He would be your greatest admirer, as always_.

“I wish there was some cure for you,” Fandral murmurs softly, his tone positively tortured. “Even with this fine country air in your lungs, you are so prone to illness. Your heart remains weak; your lungs easily overpowered; your stomach turned by anything you are not well-used to.” Loki sighs, and he pats Fandral’s arm where it interlinks with his own, the touch gentle and intended to calm him. _I’m sure if I misstep in two days’ time, Fandral, I shall not be long for this world._

“Here is my cure,” Loki says, offering the other man a small, pleasant smile. “Pleasant company and leisurely exercise, Fandral. T’is all I need.”

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki lies upon a bed of stone, his naked skin touching against the marble that sprawls out beneath him. It does not stick to his skin, for he does not sweat, and it merely touches him as stone touches stone. Lying on his belly, Loki slowly raises his head, and he looks lazily, indolently, about his surroundings. The marble makes not a bed: he lies atop an ancient altar, as the Greeks and Romans surely laid their sacrifices on, and the altar is amidst an olive grove.

Sun shines down through the thin leaves of the gnarled and twisted trees, and the sun shines hot upon Loki’s back, warming his very flesh where it touches him. The altar seems stark and clean, at odds with the brown dirt that makes up the clearing’s floor, but despite the soft breeze, the marble bed is entirely clean. None of the dirt touches it, and nary a leaf dares to mar its clean, white surface.

“Is this what I am to you?” Loki asks leisurely, and he sets his chin upon his palm. “A sacrifice on an altar?” Loki feels his length between his legs, soft and heavy where it rests upon the stone. There is no response: the grove is eerily silent, and although the breeze strokes through Loki’s hair and plays against his skin, it does not touch the leaves of the trees, nor the dust on the ground. “Give me a cigarette.”

“A cigarette? Why?”

“Because I want one, and I’m asking.”

“You’re not asking very nicely.” The voice comes from nowhere, and everywhere, at once, but Loki recognizes the golden voice of the Grandmaster.

“ _Please_ ,” Loki says, drawing out the single word and feeling the sibilance hiss from his tongue. “Give me a cigarette, Grandmaster.” The cigarette is between Loki’s index and middle fingers, and Loki takes a slow, easy drag from its butt. He had been told to smoke for his health, when he reached adulthood, but Doctor Heimdall had rather cleanly struck a line through that instruction, and often smoking would leave him ill and short of breath. This cigarette tastes of nutmeg and cinnamon, sweet upon his thin lips and tongue, and when he exhales, he makes a ring out of the pink smoke.

“Ooh,” the Grandmaster says softly. “Very clever.”

“I can only do it in dreams,” Loki says mildly, tapping the end of the cigarette and watching lilac ash drop down onto the marble surface. “You know, Grandmaster, it is considered the height of bad manners to enter a gentleman’s bedroom without at least knocking first. Pray, why should you step so easily into something more intimate – a gentleman’s mind?”

“Why, uh, you _invited_ me, Lolo,” the Grandmaster replies, his voice smooth. It is strange indeed, for a voice to come from his left and his right, before and behind him, all at once. Why is it, Loki wonders, that he feels such confidence in his dreams? It is almost as if there is some extra power afforded him here, as if the very universe is sympathizing with his weakness in his waking hours, and sees fit to balance the table when he is lying in bed.

“Is that so.” It isn’t a question. Loki takes a longer drag of the cigarette, this time, and he imagines the pink smoke filling his lungs, coiling like a serpent within the cage of his ribs, and when he exhales he paints the snake on the air with his tongue: it slithers forward, and then – mad! – begins to coil in upon itself, swallowing down its own tail. For some reason, the sight fills Loki’s heart with unspeakable melancholy. “Are you a kind man, Grandmaster?”

“Me, a man? No, no, no.” There is breath hot against Loki’s left ear, his neck, and Loki strikes with the cigarette: he hears the hiss and sizzle of burned flesh, and the Grandmaster lets out a groan of pain as he stumbles back. “ _Ow_. That— That wasn’t very nice.”

“I’m not very nice,” Loki agrees. “See that you ask my permission, Grandmaster, before you seek to touch me again – or before you invade my dreams.” The olive grove goes up in flames, and Loki closes his eyes as he roasts upon his altar.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki wakes with the rise of the sun, and he moves slowly from his bed. He coughs, quietly, and he feels the burn in his throat and his chest from smoking a cigarette even while he had slept, but there is a beautifully sweet taste in his mouth, strange although it is. He is dizzy when he stands, and the back of his hand goes to his forehead, feeling the dampness of it beneath his hand.

So much for being made of stone.

“Lights,” he orders the room. It heeds him not: Loki remains in darkness. Clenching his fist tightly before him, he slowly opens it, imagining the flicker of flame in his palm, and the four oil lamps about the room stutter before they come to life in fire. Something hums in Loki’s veins, coming to the surface and singing upon the air, and Loki’s dizziness fades like the morning mist.

There is a beautiful clock on Loki’s mantel. It is made of carefully carved ebony and is shined to a polish: upon its face are painted icy spirits that coil around the two hands, and two shifting gears at its centre show the date as it passes as well as the time. It is minutes past seven in the morning, and the date reveals itself as **29/09.**

Loki rings for his footman and begins to brush his hair.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

“Will you propose to her?” Loki asks, quietly. He leans against the doorjamb of the drawing room, and Thor looks up from the pocket watch he had been holding loosely in his palm, the silver clasp shutting with a quiet _click_ , but not before Loki had espied the small image of Sif against the one side.

“Perhaps,” Thor says quietly. “I have yet to ask Mr Wright for her hand.”

“I should ask Sif her permission before you ask for her father’s, if you wish to keep the tongue you mean to propose with,” Loki advises as he steps into the room, settling his thumbs into the pockets of his silk vest. Thor chuckles, his lips drawing back, and he gently sets his watch into the pocket over his heart.

“Would you be my best man, if I married her?” Thor asks, leaning back in his seat, and Loki smiles, sinking slowly into the seat across from him.

“Of course,” Loki answers, with an easy nod of his head.

“I would be best man at your wedding,” Thor says. A silence ensues, long and cloying and heavy upon each of their shoulders. Loki looks away from his brother, instead examining the neatly cut and polished shine of his fingernails.

“Yes,” he says finally: it rings with insincerity. He and Thor both know Loki will be laid to rest before he marries a woman, and perhaps this is why he is so eager to leave the North of England behind him, why he is so willing to go off on travels to places far and wide. A travelling man can hardly take a wife, after all, when he is moving from one country to the next: it would be impropriety of the highest order to leave one’s wife home alone without one. Being a traveller would give Loki the freedom to go unmarried without scrutiny. Funny, Loki thinks, that Thor might so easily be aware of Loki’s indecencies, and yet be so ignorant of his friend Fandral’s. “Concern yourself not with my marriage prospects. Think on Sif, instead.”

“I have no idea how I’d begin to ask her,” Thor says, simply.

“Perhaps ask her to dance,” Loki suggests softly. “Or challenge her to a duel. Either would appeal to her liking, I should think.” Thor’s lips twitch.

“She has such strength beneath her dress sleeves,” Thor murmurs quietly. “I have no doubt, sometimes, she could lift me upon one of her shoulders.”

“Your children will be strong.” Thor sighs, softly, and he sets his hands in his lap, turning away from Loki and looking about the fancy, shining paper of the walls. “What makes you so melancholy, Thor?”

“I wish things could be as they were, sometimes,” Thor murmurs. “Although there were long periods where you lay abed, things seemed so much simpler when we were children, playing in the grass, running in the woods. I miss the rosy haze that seemed to so encompass the lives we lived.”

“Gone are those days,” Loki says softly. He does not empathize, however, with Thor’s fond rememberances – much as he had enjoyed his childhood when he was fit enough to roam the meadows and country lanes with his brother and his friends, Loki is happier now that he no longer has a schoolmaster to constrain him, and that he has the freedom to move where he wishes, where he pleases, even with his sickness as his shackle. “Thor… Do you remember the games we used to play, in the wood? I would play at being Merlin, whilst you were King Arthur?” Thor chuckles, a smile coming easy to his face.

“Yes, yes,” he says, nodding his head. “Some days, Sif would be fair Guinevere, and on others, she would be the Lady Morgana. On others still, she would be a knight of the court – and Fandral was ever the dashing Sir Lancelot.” Loki stares down at his palms, which have a few callouses and scars upon them – neither he nor Thor have the idle hands of gentlemen, even as they wear their tailcoats and top hats. Indolence is not in either of their natures. “What brings this to your mind?”

“I was ever fascinated with magic, when I was young,” Loki says simply. “As of late, I have been wondering why that was.”

“You were full of magic, as a child,” Thor murmurs, his tone sweet and fond. His gaze is far away as he speaks, drowning in its reminiscence, and he says, “Many a times you held us spellbound with some wondrous tale from your imagination. Was that not real magic, Loki? Your silver tongue could enchant anybody.”

“Do you really think so?” Loki asks. “That it was real magic?”

“Of course,” Thor says. Loki feels a heated tingle beneath his skin, new and unfamiliar. It is the sensation of power.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

Loki is up late that night. He attempts to put himself abed several times, but each time rises, and he finds himself standing before his full-length mirror, holding his suits against his night-clothes and examining the way they set against his eyes, or the way they bring out the colour of his skin. What ought he wear to the Faerie Ball, tomorrow night?

He knows not.

Rifling through the jackets hanging in his wardrobe, his hand finds a costume from some years previous, the crushed velvet fabric soft and warm beneath his palm. He draws it out, and he holds it against his skin, sees the buttons shine silver in the light, the velvet brightly green. He remembers the party well indeed – he and Fandral had agreed to match their costumes to one another, that they might make a game of swapping masks throughout the night, confusing those that sought to tell them apart.

Even side-by-side, their costumes matched, their masks and the colour of their hair the only thing setting them apart from one another, Fandral had been a most admirable Robin Hood in comparison to Loki himself.

Shedding his dressing gown, Loki pulls the suit on, feeling how it clings tight to his thighs and his calves and the not immodest curve of his backside: he has grown much since last he wore this costume, and the trousers are so tight against his legs it is positively _immoral_. Loki stares at himself in the mirror, and he sees that even his crotch bulges through the fabric.

Swallowing, Loki takes up a white blouse, and he pulls it on, his fingers making quick work of the buttons. He has long been used to dressing himself, much as his father insists upon someone being there to dress him, and he draws a silk cravat of stark black around his neck, pinning it in place with a silver brooch: a snake. Drawing on the leather jerkin that serves in place of a waistcoat, he then pulls on the green jacket as well, and he drags his palms down the fabric, seeing the way it catches the light. With how tightly it clings to his body, the costume would be most inappropriate for a costume party now, but for a Fae revel…

Nausea makes itself known in Loki’s innards. Why is it, he wonders, that he is so confident in his dreams, but in his waking hours, he finds himself assailed by nerves and anxiety both? Shakes and uncomfortable twists of his organs within his belly? What changes?

Loki turns his head, looking to his desk. He stares at the drawer, and he slowly raises his hand, imagining the slow turn of the drawer’s knob, imagining the sensation of its crystal surface in his palm, imagining the resistance of the joint as he turns it and pulls.

The drawer slides open, despite the six feet between Loki’s hand and the drawer itself. He exhales, shakily, but he feels magic prickle on his skin, and he moves over to the desk, reaching within the pull the mask out. Sliding it onto nose, he ties the mask with a tight ribbon about his head, and he looks at himself in the mirror.

A figure in a suit of green velvet, wearing a snake at his throat, and with a mask of black leather hiding his eyes from view…  “I have magic,” Loki whispers to his reflection. “I have magic, and I have _power_ , and the Faeries can do naught to me I don’t allow.” He nods, firmly, and his reflection mirrors the action perfectly, but then shifts behind the glass.

“Adjust your bearing,” it instructs, raising its chin and pressing its knuckles against its own jaw, straightening its back. “You shall not walk: you shall surely glide. You are not merely a gentleman, now. You are a prince.” Even as Loki obeys, drawing himself up, he feels himself frown.

 _My prince_ , Doctor Heimdall had called him – the not-Heimdall, the Grandmaster. A sudden sound chimes in his right ear, and Loki jumps a mile, turning and putting out his hands as if holding some sort of invisible weapon, and his gaze shifts fast to the source of the sound – his clock upon his mantel, chiming midnight.

As if time itself has slowed, Loki sees the number upon the clock change before his very eyes, as **29/09** becomes **30/09**. Why should he wait? It is the 30 th of September now, and he will not stand for another dream the Grandmaster elects to invade, as if he has the right to take Loki’s mind for his own property.

Loki pushes up the window. The night air is warm against his skin, humid and slightly thick, and Loki is glad it is not colder. Very carefully, he slides one leg over the sill, turning in his place and setting one booted foot against the trellis’ surface, treating it as the rung of some ladder. The thin wood creaks beneath his weight, so Loki moves with grace and alacrity both, and as he climbs down, he feels the thorns in the roses tear at the fabric of his trousers, then rip at his palms. The trellis is all but _screaming_ beneath Loki’s weight now, and he can feel it close to snapping, so he lets himself fall freely onto the grassy bank of the garden. It jars his feet, but Loki manages to stick the landing, and although a dull throb sings through his ankles, the drop is scarcely six feet, and the pain passes with the work of a moment.

He scarcely thinks of the power it takes when he drags his palms over the ripped fabric of his costume and mends it with his magic, but the very use of it has some healing effect on Loki himself. He feels the new wounds on his palms seal themselves shut, and he wipes the blood on a handkerchief he stuffs hastily into his pocket.

It is pitch black. The street lamps have been doused for the evening, and there is but a sliver of a moon in the sky. It matters little. Loki knows these roads, no matter how dark it is, and no matter how ill he sees by them.

The walk feels longer than it ever has before.

❁ ❀ ❁ ❀ ❁

When Loki reaches the edge of the wood, he hesitates. There are the usual sounds of the forest about him, albeit different for the night – he hears the wind whistle through the trees, hears the grass and leaves rustle beneath his feet, and distantly he hears the babble of the brook. “Pray, announce me,” he commands the forest. “Loki, of the house of Borson.”

And as he steps from the path and onto the grassy carpet of the wood, the wind swirls about him in a whirlwind, sending leaves swirling around him and catching upon the air. The blackness of the wood gives way to hovering bright lights, shining golden and warm as they light up his skin, and Loki hears strange and foreign music that seems to match the very beat of his heart.

The ground beneath him is greener than ever, but the trees are now painted in silvers and golds, and from their leaves – turning such colours – hang ribbons and banners of brightest blue, contrasting with their reds and yellows in this deepest autumn. People gasp as he walks in, stepping back from him, but he ignores them, his head held high, his steps rhythmic and slow.

He can feel the beat of his heart in his very throat, feel the pound of his blood in his ears, and most of all he can feel the strange power that thrums in his veins as the very forest sings out his name, letting it play upon the air: “The wood presents _Loki, the Silvertongue!_ ”

He comes to a stop in the centre of a clearing, and he sees a band playing strange, strange instruments, the like of which he has never seen – their sounds are like singing voices in his ears, and he sees their odd strings and their strange horns, the shine of their buttons, their keys, their clasps and buckles. Many people mill about, and all of them look different to one another: Loki sees skins in every colour of the rainbow, and he sees hair of leaves, of shing silver, of flames, even.

And yet every face seems to blend before his eyes. Nothing seems to make itself readily available for his recollection. Funny.

“Well, well, well,” the Grandmaster purrs, and he takes a sip from a fruity-looking drink of shining red, before settling the glass aside to hover on the air beside him. “If it isn’t the little prince!”

“I’m not little,” Loki says mildly, and he is embarrassed by the slight shake in his tone, so he decides to distract from it: he puts out his hand and wills the Grandmaster’s glass to come to his palm. It hovers in the air, and he can feel a thousand eyes on him as he takes it in his hand, brings it to his face, and inhales. It is fruity, yes: it is made of rosehips, and blackberries.

“Are you going to have some?” the Grandmaster asks, softly.

_(“Do not Eat or Drink of anything offered to you in the Faerie realm. As soon as you imbibe or consume something there, you will find yourself within their Debt, and it can be used to trap you.”)_

“Alas, no,” Loki replies, and he sets the glass to hover anew upon the air. The Grandmaster’s tongue flicks out of his mouth to wet his lips, and he looks at Loki with an undisguised hunger. “I was merely curious as to its scent.”

“I’m curious as to yours,” the Grandmaster murmurs.

“Come closer, then,” Loki says, and then he smiles. “Or are you afeared to, Grandmaster?”

“Me? _Afeared_? Ha, of you?” The Grandmaster laughs, but Loki sees something catch in the shape of his lips and in the infinitely golden expanse of his eyes, sees his nose wrinkle for the barest fraction of a second. The Grandmaster does indeed fear _something_ , of that, Loki is sure. “Aw, kitten, you— You really are flattering yourself.”

“It’s not every young man that gets invited to so exclusive a party,” Loki says, and he lids his eyes, lowering his gaze to the forest floor: his tone is almost simpering, soft and displaying the greatest of flattery, “You can see how it might go to one’s head.” And then the Grandmaster is right in front of him, his fingers pressing against Loki’s chin to raise his head, and they are nearly mouth to mouth. Loki’s heart begins to speed somewhat – he can act the haughty prince, play at being Merlin the Wild once more, but when the Grandmaster’s mouth is hot against his own, he finds it near impossible to retain his careful dignity.

“You’re, ha, you’re really something, you know that?” the Grandmaster asks, his honey-coloured eyes alight with danger. “Ain’t just anybody who’ll, uh, who’ll mouth off to me like that.”

“You seem overly concerned with my mouth,” Loki murmurs. The Grandmaster grins.

“Y’see, that’s, that’s just what I’m talking about, honey. Can I touch you?”

“No.” He sees the Grandmaster’s tawny fingers clench at his sides, but he does not disobey the instruction, does not ignore Loki’s refusal: he keeps his hands to himself. “Why did you invite me tonight?”

“You’re… _Interesting_ ,” the Grandmaster purrs. “You figured it out yet?”

“Figured out what?” Loki asks, feeling his brows furrow, and the Grandmaster chuckles, softly.

“I’ll tell you, if you let me kiss you.” Loki considers the offer, biting his lip. He had liked it when the Grandmaster had kissed him before, much as he would deny it, and here, amongst Faeries… Isn’t he already sinning, by stepping out in the middle of the night, by coming to a Faerie revel? Isn’t he already a sinner?

“Very well,” Loki whispers. The Grandmaster’s lips are soft against his own, and when they catch against Loki’s, his tongue sliding over Loki’s teeth, Loki cannot help but moan softly, leaning into the touch and allowing the Grandmaster to kiss him deeper: Loki’s very magic surges in his veins, and he feels the ozone crackle as his own magic meets the Grandmaster’s, feels it surge within him and leave him _gasping_. The Grandmaster pulls away, and Loki sighs, headily. “Tell me,” he says breathlessly. “Figured out what?”

“There’s a secret about you,” the Grandmaster whispers against his lips. “A big, _big_ secret – so big it’s hot in your, ha, cool little body. So big everybody here can see it. That’s why you can’t see anybody’s face.” Loki frowns, looking around the party once more, and he sees smiles and laughs, but he cannot really make out the faces they belong to, even now.

“A big secret,” he repeats, softly. “Won’t you tell me what it is? I’ll let you kiss me again.”

“Oh, no, no,” the Grandmaster murmurs, softly, and his gaze roves over the green velvet of Loki’s suit, admiring the way it clings to his body, admiring the way it barely contains the thickness of Loki’s backside or the muscle of his thighs. “I’d need, ha, I’d need something more substantial than a kiss.”

“Something I’m not prepared to offer, I’d wager.”

“Shall we dance?” the Grandmaster asks, proffering his hand.

“You just want an excuse to touch me.”

“You’re damned right.” Loki hesitates, looking at the Grandmaster’s hand, and as a jig begins to play, he takes the hand. The Grandmaster pulls him close, so that they’re flush against one another, and his other hand touches against Loki’s hip, playing over it just as it had before.

“The song is too fast,” Loki murmurs. “Have them play a waltz.”

“You say it as if you can’t tell them yourself, bright eyes,” the Grandmaster murmurs, and he’s so close Loki can feel the slow beat of his heart against his own. Loki turns his head toward the band.

“Something slower, if you would,” he calls out. “A waltz would be most appreciated.” The jig gives way to a waltz like the beach gives way to a wave, the music becoming slower and smoother and easier, and immediately he and the Grandmaster are stepping upon the grass: _one-two-three and one-two-three and one-two-three and—_ “My thanks,” Loki says.

The approval of the Faerie court is almost tangible.

“ _Such manners!”_ says a voice that tinkles like bells.

“ _Such poise,”_ says another, sounding like the musical crack of winter ice. _“How well he dances!”_

“Do you mean to whisk me away?” Loki asks, mildly. His hand settles tight against the Grandmaster’s shoulder, feeling its warmth beneath his palm. “Faeries do that, I hear.”

“We couldn’t do that to _you_ ,” the Grandmaster says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Couldn’t?” Loki repeats, raising his eyebrows.

“Consider it a clue,” the Grandmaster says softly. “Let me, ha… Let me kiss you again.”

“No.”

“Let me lower my hand.”

“No.”

“Is there anything I _can_ do to you?”

“You can dance with me,” Loki answers. “I won’t submit myself to such— To such vile acts, Grandmaster. You think me some sort of pervert.”

“No,” the Grandmaster disagrees. “But I’d, I’d love to make you into one. A pervert. Have you begging in my lap, feel my fingers inside you—”

“Sir!”

“Ooh, call me that again,” the Grandmaster whispers, evidently unassuaged by Loki’s indignation. “Call me _sir_ and spank my heiney.” Loki is surprised by the laughter that comes past his lips, and he looks down. “Love the costume, by the way. Very cute.”

“It seemed the most ridiculous attire I owned,” Loki murmurs. “I thought it well-suited to a party such as this one.” Loki’s fear is seeping slowly away from him, drifting away on the air amidst the eerie, whistling music, and Loki feels himself sigh, quietly. The Grandmaster’s fingers are rubbing slow circles against Loki’s hip, through the velvet and the leather he wears, and the heat of that touch tingles over his skin, making him sensitive to touch, and in his loins he can feel heat stirring, feeling _himself_ come— Come to hardness. “This is why you wanted to touch me,” Loki whispers, ashamed of want, the desire, in his voice. The Grandmaster is undoubtedly handsome, after all. “You wished to cast this magic upon me.”

“Let me kiss you,” the Grandmaster murmurs. “I’m not, ha, I’m not accustomed to being refused, kitten.”

“You’re not accustomed to asking permission,” Loki says. “Those aren’t the same thing.” The music is beginning to get faster, and so too are his and the Grandmaster’s steps, but the Grandmaster’s fingers continue to rub against the back of Loki’s hip, his thumb digging into the bone at his waist, and Loki cannot help the soft noise that escapes him as a pulse of energy is sent hissing over his skin. “And if I relent? If I let you rut within me, like some mindless beast, will you tell me what the secret is?”

“Oh, I, I don’t be like some _mindless beast_ ,” the Grandmaster promises. “I’ll make you see stars, babe, I’ll— I’ll make you see _galaxies_.” Loki feels the want within him, coiling deep – is this all he is, now? Is he willing to sell his body, so long protected from those who would use it, defile it, debase it, for a _secret_?

“My father kept this from me?” Loki asks. “And my mother?”

“Oh, they know,” the Grandmaster says, chuckling. “And the good doctor, too.”

“And it will feel… I’ve heard it hurts.”

“Nah,” the Grandmaster says slowly. “It doesn’t hurt, sweetheart, not if you don’t want it too. It’s gonna be the best thing you’ve ever felt. I’ll make you _beg_ for more.” Loki swallows, feeling his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat, and he grips the Grandmaster all the tighter.

“Very well,” Loki whispers. “If you will tell me the secret, I will let you defile my body as you see fit. The secret first, mind you.” The music suddenly stops, and yet as Loki and the Grandmaster move still, it seems that the clearing continues to spin around them.

“Okay, honey,” the Grandmaster murmurs. “I’ll tell ya.” And he leans in, his breath hot against the shell of Loki’s ear. When he finishes speaking, Loki drops to his knees, but he keeps his mouth tight closed: if he does not, he’s certain his heart will flutter right out of his mouth.

All he knows is the sensation of the grass beneath his knees, a curling hand in his hair, and the Grandmaster’s soft, easy laughter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow. This is all smut. Plot next time, I promise!

Loki floats alone in the blackness of infinity. His eyes tightly closed, he feels the weightlessness around his body, and he feels a hand on his left thigh, strong and pressing against the layer of muscle there. Loki whimpers. He feels as if he has been set adrift amidst galaxies and nebulae, as if space itself has swallowed him up, as the great whale swallowed Jonah, and Loki exhales shakily, before realising he does not need to use his lungs.

Opening his eyes, he looks around. He is on his back – equally, he is on his belly, or on his feet, or balanced upon his head, depending on which way one looks at him. The sensation of _no gravity at all_ is strangely calming.

He remembers the Grandmaster’s words in his ear, warm as honey but not so sweet: _“Well, honey, you’re not one of them. You’re not a man. You never were. Odin Borson stole you, baby, you’re— Ha. You’re one of us. A Faerie… A changeling.”_

And then the voice comes, echoing off the walls of his skull: _Changeling! Changeling! Changeling!_ Echoing laughter tinkles and titters in each of his ears, and although Loki does not need to, he desperately heaves in lungfuls of air to keep himself from dying, please, no, no—

“Aw, okay, okay, c’mere,” a voice murmurs, and Loki gasps as he feels himself _wrenched_ from the darkness, pulled abruptly into reality – or something like it – once more. He is sat upon the Grandmaster’s lap, trembling as a leaf in the wind, and the Grandmaster’s hand is stroking a slow, comforting circle on Loki’s lower back. The party is gone: instead, he and the Grandmaster are alone in some river cave, water whispering softly against the shore of the little beach they reside on. At the cave’s mouth, Loki sees a curtain of weeping willow hanging down, and he looks around in quiet awe as the tiny balls of light floating and thrumming silently upon the air, offering golden light despite the darkness of the night. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“This is a dream,” Loki says. He sounds as if he is drunk, his mouth clumsily slurring the words, and when he looks at the Grandmaster’s face, he sees the other man’s eyebrows are raised. Loki looks at his face, taking in the blue pigment that emphasises the shape and colour of his eyes, and he reaches out, touching the line of blue at his chin. The paint is silken to the touch, not powdery or sticky at all, and a little of it comes away on Loki’s finger.

“It’s not a dream, honey,” the Grandmaster murmurs, his tone almost comforting. His large hand is so warm where it settles at the base of Loki’s spine, and Loki realises all at once the indignity of the situation, curled up in this near-stranger’s lap like a child with a skinned knee, and he feels shame blossom within him, heating his cheeks. “Oh, I, ha, I like that.” The Grandmaster is looking at Loki as if he is some beautiful painting, and Loki turns his head away.

“Why reveal this to me?” Loki asks, in a whisper. A changeling. He, a changeling! A faerie in the place of a human child, and Loki, Loki…

“Why, you’re of age, aren’t you? Twenty-five? Your magic has gone unused so _long_ – it must make you so, ha, so sick not to use it.” Loki turns back to look at the Grandmaster’s thoughtful expression, and without thinking he puts his hand hard to the Grandmaster’s cheek, cupping its heated expanse, feeling the hard line of his jaw.

“Sick?” he repeats, sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Well, your body, sweet thing, it’s made for magic. Not using it’ll just make all the parts rust, make you break down a little. Weak heart, weak lungs, stuff like that. Faeries are meant for _Faeries_ , not for pesky little mortals.” The Grandmaster’s hand is sliding lower, dipping beneath the waistband of Loki’s tight breeches, and Loki gasps as he feels his middle finger press hot between the cleft of Loki’s buttocks, touching— Touching the _hole_ there. “But me, I, ha, I have just the medicine for ya.”

“You would call this indecency a medicine?” Loki asks breathlessly.

“Aw, just _enjoy_ it,” the Grandmaster purrs, his lips quirking into a little grin. “You might as well.” Loki bites his lip. He thinks of how it had once been at his school, the soft gasps and whimpers of other boys in their beds together, or behind the outbuildings, or in the bushes at the edge of the woods. He thinks of the way he had always caught Fandral’s hands before they slipped beneath his waist, _wishing_ he could let Fandral’s hands wander where they pleased, without fear of impropriety. He has so much to think about, and yet, and yet… The Grandmaster’s hand is so distracting, the play of his finger over the dry pucker Loki has never spared any thought to, but to cleanse it in the bath, and he is weak. Loki is so, so weak.

“Alright,” Loki whispers.

All at once, the cave changes around them: the lights upon the air dim, and Loki sees a bed. The bed is a hauntingly beautiful thing, made of vine-wood that seems to have been grown into furniture instead of carved, with a mattress of softest eiderdown and a blanket of woven flowers, the petals soft under his searching fingers. The Grandmaster is upon him, and his clever fingers slowly begin to unbutton Loki’s overcoat. Uncertain what to say, what to do with his hands, Loki does naught, and merely stands as a mannequin as the Grandmaster undresses him.

He does not bother to fold the garments as they are removed: Loki’s velvet overcoat drops to the ground, and then his blouse, and then his undershirt, his vest. “Take those boots off,” the Grandmaster murmurs, and Loki sits on the end of the bed, carefully pulling the leather away from his feet, and the Grandmaster laughs, peering down at his stockings with interest.

“What is it?”

“I love the patterns,” the Grandmaster murmurs, playing over the green embroidery at the side of Loki’s ankle, apparently incognizant of the sensitive flesh beneath, and Loki shudders. The Grandmaster reaches for his breeches, unlacing them, and he takes advantage of the motion of sliding them down Loki’s waist, leaning right against Loki’s shirtless body, his breath hot on Loki’s skin, and Loki shudders once more even as he awkwardly steps out of the bunched trousers. Then, he goes to the fastening of his drawers, taking them and his stockings off in one motion, and here stands Loki, naked as the day he was born. “Ooh,” the Grandmaster says. When Loki looks at him, his gaze is pointed downwards, directly at the valley between Loki’s thighs, and Loki feels himself press his knees together, almost turning his body away, but the Grandmaster stops him, two possessive hands upon his hips. The Grandmaster is grinning now, showing his teeth, and there is a hardness to his eyes, a hunger shining in their golden depths. “Do you know how it works? Sex?” Loki swallows, his Adam’s Apple bobbing in his throat.

“I— Between a man and a woman, he… He puts his length within her, until he spends.”

“That’s what I’m going to do to you,” the Grandmaster says in a gleeful whisper, and Loki feels his brows furrow, his lips parting.

“ _How_?” he demands, and the Grandmaster laughs at him, shoving him hard onto the bed. Loki lets out a soft exhalation, staring up at him, but the Grandmaster is already advancing, still garbed in his fine robes, and he slips onto the bed. The woven petals are soft and gentle against Loki’s skin, but still he gasps when the Grandmaster wrenches his thighs apart – the movement is so rough he is certain they will tear the delicate blanket beneath them, but they do not. Loki’s length is soft against his thigh, and he braces himself for the Grandmaster to touch it, but he does not. No, no, the Grandmaster’s hand dips lower, under the sac of Loki’s testes and pressing against his anus once more, and Loki gasps as he feels the Grandmaster’s thumb is _slick_ with some manner of oil. Understanding comes to him all at once, and he tries to close his legs, but they are fastened in place by some magic unknown. “You cannot mean— Sir, that is an _exit,_ not an entrance.”

“Haha, don’t knock it ‘til you try it, honeybunch,” the Grandmaster murmurs against Loki’s knee, and Loki shifts and fidgets as much as he can with his thighs pinned to the bed beneath him: the Grandmaster’s thumb presses _in_ , slipping past the ring of muscle, and Loki gasps at the oddity of the sensation. “See? You’re, ha, forgive me for saying so, sweetness, but you’re just _made_ for this.” The Grandmaster’s thumb is hot and foreign within him, supernaturally slick where it presses in, and the sensation, oh! It is not unfamiliar, for of course Loki has passed things before, but this is so different – even as the muscle clenches, attempting to force out the intruder, it stirs not, even pressing deeper within him. The Grandmaster’s other fingers are splayed against his thigh and brush against his sac, and Loki is breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with great alacrity.

“Sir,” he whispers. “You cannot mean… I could not possibly take a member within me.”

“Why?” the Grandmaster asks, amusedly. “Because it’s sodomy?”

“Well, I confess, I had not considered that offence, but yes, that too.” The Grandmaster’s laugh bubbles up like water from a geyser, and he draws back his thumb – Loki is grateful to whatever powers that be to see his thumb is _clean_ , for surely, surely this is the most filthy act one can embark upon.

“Okay, okay,” he says, relenting, and Loki feels relief settle warm in his every inch of flesh, loosening his limbs. “I won’t put any more fingers in you.”

“Thank you,” Loki says gratefully, his head tipping back against the mattress. He looks up at the cave ceiling, which is overgrown with mosses of softest blue and lilac, and he sighs, continuing, “I mean not to renege upon our covenant, Grandmaster, but I simply— _whatareyoudoing—!"_ Loki’s words are shrill and high even to his own ears, and he _writhes_ on the bed as he feels something impossibly hotter and wetter than the Grandmaster’s thumb playing over his entrance, dexterously tracing the every line and wrinkle of his pucker, and Loki cries out.

The Grandmaster’s hands take hold of Loki’s thighs and drag them closer to him, so that his cheeks are hot against the insides of Loki’s legs, his silver hair tickling the sensitive flesh there, and Loki cannot bear to look as he feels the Grandmaster’s _tongue_ slip inside him. It is different indeed – where the thumb had been warm, alive, but unyielding, the tongue is entirely a new experience, flicking within him and laving against his inner walls, and Loki feels the keen tear at his throat as he helplessly arches his back into the attentions, his fingers knotting themselves in the Grandmaster’s hair and digging at his scalp, begging wordlessly for him to never cease. The Grandmaster’s tongue cannot possibly be this long, this thick, this adroit, and he sweeps it within Loki as if to core him like an apple, curving over the muscles that seem so desperately to wish to force him out, and then—

Loki sees stars.

The scream coils in his throat like a spring in a mechanism, Loki’s vision going white at the edges, stars bursting in black and red and blue across his eyes as the Grandmaster’s tongue presses, somehow, inexplicably, at the base of his member _through_ the wall of his passage, sending pleasure coursing through his body like a white river rushing over rocks. He feels his member twitch and jump against his belly, feels his sac tighten like a coin purse as it is drawn up against his body, even with the Grandmaster’s nose nuzzled against it, and here is his orgasm, wrenching him apart.

Loki is left trembling upon his bed of flowers, staring down at the Grandmaster as he leans back from Loki’s loins: his expression satisfied, a light sheen of perspiration on his cheeks (is that his own, or Loki’s?), he still as Loki’s ankles locked tight around his back, Loki’s thighs still over his shoulders. Loki’s breath hitches in his throat: there are tears on his cheeks, sliding down the skin.

“Now,” the Grandmaster asks softly. “Was that, ha, was that so bad?” Loki marginally shakes his head. “Imagine _that_ , but bigger.”

“I don’t believe I can.” The Grandmaster’s laugh is soft, indulgent, and he drags a sweeping kiss over Loki’s left thigh, his amusement showing plain in the quirk of his lips and the softness of his eyes. How can this monster, this Faerie beast, make Loki feels so _comfortable_? It must merely be the passing throes of his orgasm, leaving him as liquid, and the Grandmaster carefully disentangles himself from Loki’s thighs, his fingers stroking over Loki’s body as he kneels up between his legs. Loki looks up at him, boneless as an eel, but his eyes flutter closed as the Grandmaster’s fingers drag hot lines from Loki’s hips up toward his chest.

“You’re real cute, ya know,” the Grandmaster murmurs. “But ha, I don’t know why I expected anything else, what with the royalty and all.”

“You keep saying that,” Loki says, doing his best not to be too distracted by those clever digits tracing patterns upon his skin, and failing miserably, “but I know not what you mean. If I am a changeling, as you say, I fail to see how I might be royalty.” Loki thinks of the portraits, the statues, he has seen of her majesty Queen Victoria, and of her children, but then the Grandmaster’s thumb brushes over one of his nipples, sending a spark of desire through him, and all of his thoughts are dashed into the ether.

“Not _human_ royalty,” the Grandmaster says, almost chiding in his tone. “You’re a _prince_ , honey. And your, ha, your daddy stole you.”

“Why?” The Grandmaster shrugs.

“Why does anybody steal anything? He wanted you.” Loki frowns, and when the Grandmaster’s palm slides over his jaw, pressing at the flesh there, he sees the Grandmaster’s eyes shift, just slightly – that hunger is there again. Ah. A revelation: the Grandmaster _wants_ him, and not merely as a matter of conjugal union – no, no, the Grandmaster would own Loki as a pet, an object, a toy. _He can’t do that,_ Loki thinks, headily, _I’m a prince_.

Well. That entitlement came rather quickly, didn’t it?

Using his strength, and finding his thighs are no longer tethered to the bed beneath them with magics unknown, Loki forces the Grandmaster onto his back, and he slides to straddle his lap. The Grandmaster’s eyes widen in surprise, and Loki experimentally grinds his hips down against the Grandmaster’s crotch, as he had seen Fandral do to a young man once in some ill-travelled casino on the outskirts of Leeds, and the Grandmaster groans, tipping his hips up into Loki’s weight, his eyes fluttering closed. There, then: Loki _does_ have power. He has his magic, growing beneath his skin, and he has his body.

“Tell me about my magic,” Loki orders, the imperative plain in his tone, and the Grandmaster’s lips curl, but then Loki’s hands slide over his chest through the silken fabric of his robes, thumbing for his nipples through the fabric. The Grandmaster’s lips come apart, his clever tongue darting out to wet his lower lip, and Loki slowly begins to untie the belt at the Grandmaster’s waist. “Please,” he adds, softly.

“Magic is everywhere,” the Grandmaster murmurs, his voice mellow and resonant where it hits the walls of their private little cave, and Loki sees that he wears naught beneath his outer robe. Loki sees the expanse of golden brown skin, so much darker than his pale hands, and he traces the lines of the Grandmaster’s abdominal muscles and the divot of his hips, curious at how hard the flesh is in some places, how yielding in others. “In the air, the water, the trees… And it should be inside you. It _wants_ to be inside you.” There is a heat on Loki’s skin, settling there like a morning dew. He unlaces the skirt that clings about the Grandmaster’s hips, feeling the shimmering fabric give way, and there is the Grandmaster’s length, long and fat and hard, a pearl of liquid gathering at the tip.

“Does it?” Loki whispers. “How?”

“You have to, ha, you gotta let it in, sweetheart,” the Grandmaster says in scarcely more than a whisper, breathing the words onto the air, and Loki’s shaking hand wraps unsteadily around the Grandmaster’s member, feeling it hot (so hot!) against his palm. Loki has _never_ engaged in onanism, but he has held himself in his palm, felt the weight of his own organ, and yet the Grandmaster’s is different indeed. Power thrums beneath his skin, thrums so hotly that Loki can feel it, feel it calling to his _own_ power, and his mouth is dry as he squeezes, twists his hand, and the Grandmaster moans. “That’s it,” he whispers. “That’s it, that’s it, doll, you just— Little bit harder.” Loki strengthens his grip, tightening the coil of his palm, and the Grandmaster _undulates_ beneath him like a swelling wave: he sees the eye of his member – the urethra, his mind supplies, distantly – blink and dribble, and clear liquid spatters over the backs of his fingers, slick and hot. Loki hears the moan before he realises it has come from between his own lips. “You have to, ha, you have to _invite_ it in. Imagine it flowing through you, imagine it hot inside you—”

“You said you would lay with me,” Loki says hazily. “ _Now_.”

“What, no please?”

“I—” But he does not need to say _please_ , it seems: the Grandmaster’s hands are upon Loki’s hips, and he is pulling Loki forward, lining his member up with the puckered star of Loki’s hole – his _entrance_ – and— “Agh,” Loki hisses as the Grandmaster’s head breaches him, the wetness stinging. “It hurts.”

“Well, that’s why you shoulda let me finger you, hon,” the Grandmaster says, unsympathetically, and he pulls Loki’s hips down _hard_. Loki feels as if he is being split apart, as if he is being wrenched in two: he feels the sudden, agonising burn as his tight muscles are forced wide, made to accommodate the rod inside him, and he scrabbles for purchase, attempting to pull back and away, but the Grandmaster’s grip is like a vice upon his hips, his fingernails digging it. When Loki’s buttocks touch the Grandmaster’s thighs, the whole length of him sheathed within him like Excalibur in the stone of old, Loki lets out a reedy sob, and the Grandmaster _laughs_ at him. “You said now,” he murmurs. Loki acts without thinking: with his right hand, still wet with the Grandmaster’s spend, he smacks the other man across the face. The sound of it rings like a clap against the stone walls, and the wetness of Loki’s hand has served to dislodge the Grandmaster’s pigmented chin, leaving the blue a messy streak across his jaw. “You little—”

“Prince,” Loki growls. “ _Prince_ , you called me, then prince I shall be. You will treat me with some modicum of respect, sir, and be glad I don’t strike you again.” The Grandmaster chuckles, sending quakes through Loki’s core, and the pain, oh, the pain is edged with something more now – the pleasurable pressure of something buried _inside_ him, something wet, and unrelenting, like a force of nature.

“Is that what you want, sweetie?” the Grandmaster asks, his tone dangerously soft. “You want me to act as befitting our, ha, respective stations?”

“Yes,” Loki retorts.

“Well,” the Grandmaster murmurs, smirking. “Don’t pretend you didn’t ask for it.” His hand is suddenly strong around Loki’s throat, gripping so hard at the flesh that Loki is choking, and he pushes Loki back against the bed by his throat, his hips thrusting into Loki’s abused entrance at a punishing pace. Loki cries out hoarsely, not quite able to make proper sound with such a grip around his neck, and he tries to kick the Grandmaster away from him as he draws out, so that only his head remains within him, then slams forward with such force that their flesh slaps wetly together, that Loki feels as if he will be had so thoroughly he will never walk again.

His hands grip uselessly at the Grandmaster’s arm, his fingernails digging into the flesh to attempt to loosen his grasp, but the Grandmaster keeps choking him, squeezes so tightly that Loki’s vision begins to darken at the edges, his lungs burn for disuse, and he feels all the blood in his head shoot _downwards_ , his member hard and stood to attention despite having only just been sated. The Grandmaster loosens his grasp only when Loki is on the verge of unconsciousness, and Loki wails like a bean sidhe, feeling real tears come to his eyes this time, feeling himself begin to weep. The Grandmaster’s hunger does not dissipate, particularly as Loki does not cease his struggling even as tears drip hot down his cheeks, but when he attempts to strike at the other man, the Grandmaster grabs at his wrist, and then the other, leaning forward to pin them above his head as he blankets Loki’s body with his own. His hips do not cease their bruisingly hard thrusts, and his face is right against Loki’s, now, his breath hot and sweet-smelling against Loki’s own lips.

“You want to, ha, you want me to treat you like you deserve to be treated?” the Grandmaster asks lowly, and Loki whines as he twists his hips, sending a spearing agony through Loki’s gut and yet making him _spark_ with pleasure: there is a great heat within him, coiling hot within his belly, and Loki cannot conceive of it, cannot _believe_ that such harsh treatment should serve to stoke the flames of his desire. “You’re just a _prince_ , honey, with no claim to his throne, in a, ha, foreign territory. I’m the _King_.”

The Grandmaster buries himself to the hilt once more, momentarily stilling the movement of his hips, and Loki can feel nothing except the Grandmaster, overwhelmed by the vividness of him: heavy in his nostrils is the scent of the Grandmaster’s strange perfume, hot against him is the Grandmaster’s body, and spearing him open is the Grandmaster’s member, the centre of Loki’s agonising existence. “Apologize,” the Grandmaster whispers, “and maybe I’ll move again.” Loki sniffles, and he wishes he could wipe his running nose, clean his wet cheeks, but he tries to shift his hips, tries to press himself back against the Grandmaster – it is pointless. The Grandmaster is as still as a steel girder.

“Please,” Loki mumbles, on the very cusp, the very cliff, of his ecstasy. “ _Please_.”

“Apologize,” the Grandmaster growls, the word thrumming with unspeakable power that makes Loki’s own member twitch and jump.

“I’m sorry,” Loki gasps out. “I apologize, Grandmaster, _please,_ take mercy—" And there the Grandmaster sets up his punishing pace once more, but he no longer withdraws: instead, he draws back by scant more than an inch on each thrust, and every one seems calculated to drag hard over that sensitive spot just behind his member, his sac, _within_ him, and Loki will surely die! Heat is burning within him, such heat as he has never felt before, radiating outward from the press and gyration of the Grandmaster’s waist against his own, filling him more completely than he ever has been filled before, and Loki’s eyes flutter closed. This heat, this _heat_ , it is more than the coil of his orgasm within him: it’s the most splendid feeling Loki has ever experienced, seeping into his limbs, leaving him liquid and pliant under the Grandmaster’s touch, and when his orgasm takes him over, making him stiffen and draw up, the pleasure is nothing compared with the ecstasy of this mellifluous, searing burn.

The Grandmaster’s spend washes hot against the inside of Loki’s walls, and it does not stop, does not stop, until Loki feels like his belly is _taut_ with it, as if any more spend washing within him will cause him to _burst_ , and still does the Grandmaster’s member throb within him, keeping him corked like a wine skein. Loki feels the thickness of the liquid within him, weighting so heavily and _stinging_ at his abused walls, and by God, by God—

When he finally stops, Loki lies exhausted, a sheen of perspiration upon his skin, his chest rising and falling, and he can see his belly _is_ slightly swollen, so much so that it causes Loki fear – but the fear is far away, as if merely cresting the horizon of his mood, kept distant from him. Loki stares down at the roundness of his usually flat stomach, and the Grandmaster chuckles, releasing Loki’s wrists. Dimly, Loki feels blood rush back into his hands, and he dizzily looks from the Grandmaster’s amused face to the Grandmaster’s fingers, which slip downwards— “No,” Loki protests weakly. “Don’t—”

The Grandmaster’s finger presses against Loki’s tender gut, making the taut skin give way, and Loki whimpers at the pain of it. This is much worse than having overindulged at a Christmas meal, so much worse, and Loki bites down hard on his lower lip as the Grandmaster gently pats his belly: it makes the Grandmaster’s inhuman spend _slosh_ inside him, and Loki groans.

“I wouldn’t, ha, I wouldn’t normally do this, but I just couldn’t _resist_ ,” the Grandmaster murmurs, his palm sliding over the swell, and then he presses his heel into it: the pain is unspeakable, corked as Loki is by the Grandmaster’s length, the displaced liquid has nowhere to go but _deeper_ into his swollen guts, and Loki closes his eyes tightly, heaving in a gasp of pain. “We clear, honey, on who rules the roost?”

“As crystal,” Loki mumbles.

“Good.” And then the Grandmaster pulls back, leaving Loki achingly open, and he exhales in humiliation as he feels the liquid dribble from within him, staining the bed and his thighs – most of it stays put, thick as it is, but Loki now stands in a sizable wet patch upon the mattress, and he stews in his shame. “Come on, come on, _up—”_ Loki gasps as the Grandmaster pulls him off the bed, bringing him flush against his body, and Loki moans at the pressure on his belly, feels the wetness run down his legs and _drip_ upon the ground, and he presses his face into the Grandmaster’s chest just to hide the humiliated blush that burns in his cheeks. “Aw, what, suddenly shy?”

“I felt your magic within me,” Loki mutters, desperate to change the subject. “It burned.”

“Yeah, I, uh, I run kinda hot,” he says, with a very feigned modesty. “You, you’re cold.”

“I’m not especially cold,” Loki says, shaking his head. He feels the sordid openness of his own body, the looseness of his limbs – this is intercourse, then. This is what drives men _mad_. Loki sympathizes. “I have ill circulation in my feet and hands, but I—”

“ _Honey_ ,” the Grandmaster says, cutting through Loki’s speech, and he drags Loki to the shore of the little cove, gesturing for him to look down. Despite the soft lap of the water against the sand and stone, it is mostly still, so still Loki can see the both of them reflected in it. “You ready?”

“For that?” There is a strange sensation that passes through Loki’s body, making him feel momentarily porous, the sensation moving through him as a breeze through a lace curtain. Unexpectedly, it causes him to sneeze, and the Grandmaster pushes a handkerchief into his hand for him to wipe at his nose and dab at his wet face. His face, which— Feels odd. Hard, unyielding. Loki glances down at himself in the mirror, and he shocks back, gasping in horror. “That isn’t… Surely, that cannot be I.” Hesitating, he slowly leans forward, and he feels the Grandmaster’s guiding hand upon the small of his back, a tether to the real world.

Loki’s hair is silken and soft, hanging in strands around his face, which is blue. Loki’s skin is blue, and hard to the touch, and his eyes have an extra, protective lens of red that tints his vision slightly until he wills it to retract – and there, Loki’s eyes are as blue as the rest of him. Reaching up, he traces the strange lines upon his chin and his cheeks, circular… And there they are upon his torso, too, even marking his arms. Despite the filth that clings to Loki’s thighs, dripping down as the Grandmaster’s mark of ownership, Loki can see more marks beneath – the marks of his own skin.

“I’m beautiful,” he says, softly, surprised at the sound of his own voice – more raspy, wetter, but with a sonorous, lilting quality he has never possessed before. Reaching up, he presses against his hair, and he feels the soft hardness of horns coming out from the hardness of his skull – _horns!_ He is horned, like a devil! No, no. Like a Faerie.

“That you are,” the Grandmaster agrees, and pushes him into the water.

The sudden splash makes Loki yell in shock, but there is no expected coldness of the water – in fact, it feels rather warm against his own cold flesh, and he comes to the surface, spitting river water from his mouth and treading water to glare up at the Grandmaster. “Pray,” he begins, archly. “Is there a reason _your majesty_ sees fit to upturn me into the water?”

“You’re filthy,” the Grandmaster says, simply.

“Ah.” Loki lacks a good response to that. “So I am.” Reaching between his legs, he scrubs away the clinging slick of the Grandmaster on his thighs, and then he presses _hard_ against his own belly, feeling his body _complain_. And yet… His hand slips lower. He feels his cock, but now it is smaller, much smaller, and— Loki’s cold blood runs hot. He bites down on his lower lip.

“Grandmaster,” he says, and the Faerie King glances up from where he had been delicately wiping Loki’s own spend from his stomach, his eyebrows arched.

“What?”

“I—” Loki swallows, conflicted, as he feels the _lips_ of this new organ, feels its openness— “This is wrong. Something has turned ill.” The Grandmaster _frowns_ , seeming baffled and concerned, and he leans forward, offering Loki his hand. Lok takes it, allowing the other man to lift him from the water, and the Grandmaster looks him up and down.

“Okay, uh, what’s the problem?”

“My—” Loki’s mouth is abruptly dry. “My… My organs.”

“Well, yeah, some of ‘em are a little different,” the Grandmaster agrees. “Your heart’s bigger, no appendix, of course, secondary liver, and ooh, you’ve got that bifurcated stomach that makes the boys go—”

“ _No_ ,” Loki says, plaintively. “I— My form is confused. I seem more female than male.”

“You’re not _female_ ,” the Grandmaster says, nearly scoffing, and he drops into a crouch, rolling his eyes as his hands reach up. They are still wet, and Loki flinches away on instinct where the hands touch him. With an academic curiously, the Grandmaster’s long fingers play over the cool, lilac flesh of Loki’s outer lips, and then hook within him, playing experimentally around the entrance to the canal, and Loki hisses out a sound. “Well, you know what that is?” The Grandmaster’s finger plays over a thin membrane of skin, dipping into its opening, and Loki lets out a low grunt of pain.

“No,” he mumbles.

“That’s your, uh, _hymen_ , sweetie.”

“Hymen,” Loki repeats, not understanding.

“You probably, ha, you probably use the word _maidenhead_.” The Grandmaster brings his fingers to his mouth, wetting them with his tongue, and then he brings them over the flesh either side of the opening, making a spark of pleasure run up Loki’s spine. “What a _treat_. I didn’t, uh, I didn’t think of this, but of course – going so _unused_ has this form, why, of course, you’re, uh, unspoiled. Gee, I thought I was done with you for tonight, honey, but—” The Grandmaster chuckles, quietly. “ _Virginity_. Such a funny word. I really do like ploughing a field no one’s ever ploughed before.”

“Who says I should let you?” Loki asks, breathily. “You have already— Already defiled me, as I, as I agreed.” Fear blooms within him, _fear_ at using these strange new organs, and even as he speaks, the Grandmaster’s fingers are playing over the fat flesh between his legs, and Loki’s member – if member it can be called, now – is twitching with overstimulation.

“Actually,” the Grandmaster murmurs, his tone dripping with humour, “I believe you phrased it _defile me as you see fit_. And, ha, sorry, honey, but I’ve got a lot still to defile here.” The water heats from Loki’s skin, and he wriggles under the strange sensation as the stuff comes away from him as steam, leaving his hair thick and light as a cloud about his head.

“Teach me how to do that,” Loki says, and the Grandmaster chuckles as he pushes Loki back onto the bed – oh, the wet patch is gone. _Good_.

“In a minute, honey,” the Grandmaster promises. His fingers, slick with oil conjured from somewhere, gently press against Loki’s— “What do we want to call this, huh? Hole? Cunny? _Cunt_?” Loki shudders.

“Such, such harsh words,” Loki gasps out, even as the Grandmaster presses one finger against the gap in the thin layer of tissue, and Loki is just beginning a groan of pain when the pain slips away entirely – that area is numb. The Grandmaster works with care, and Loki cranes his neck to see, but can’t quite get an angle to do so.

“I’m just working it back,” he murmurs, carefully pushing another finger inside him – Loki feels a strange pressure, coupled with a distant burn, but there is no pain. “See, it’s pretty easy to tear these, but you don’t have to, ha, damage the goods. You can just…” Loki moans as he feels the Grandmaster’s two fingers brush against the sides of his canal, which is beginning to grow swollen and wet of its own accord, and the Grandmaster laughs. “See, that moan? _Not_ a female moan. It isn’t about the parts, pretty boy: it’s about the purr of the engine.”

“I don’t have an engine,” Loki says, slightly dreamily, and then the Grandmaster’s hand cups his entire— his entire _cunt_ all at once, grabbing at it so roughly it sends a shuddering pleasure through his entire body.

“Don’t you?” the Grandmaster asks, and Loki exhales.

“We’re missing the party,” he says. It’s a token protest: even as he speaks, he spreads his aching, exhausted thighs, and the Grandmaster laughs at him.

“That party is going to last _days_ ,” he murmurs, evidently amused. His hand goes to his member, stroking it to hardness, and Loki bites his lip.

“Wait, wait, what if I— What if I could become… I could hardly carry—”

“Gee, Lo-lo, I’m really not a _father_ kinda guy,” the Grandmaster murmurs. “The magic’ll take care of it, honey, I promise: no one’s getting pregnant here that doesn’t want to.” And Loki feels the magic in his veins thrum in confirmation: yes, this promise shall hold. His hands are so hot against Loki’s cold flesh, and he pulls and drags at the flesh around Loki’s cunny, making Loki clench on bare air, feeling new, strange muscles work. “Call me Daddy.”

“What?” Loki asks, and then the Grandmaster grabs Loki by the fatty flesh either side of his outer lips and _squeezes_. The sensation is otherworldly, his entire experience being narrowed down the sensation of his blood flowing between the Grandmaster’s gripping fingers, and when he clenches, he feels his member move against the Grandmaster’s palm, dragging _heavenly_ over the palm, and oh, he is so wet, and open, and _needing_. “Will you, will you do it?”

“Will I what?”

“Plough the unploughed field.” The Grandmaster bites his lower lip in such an unabashed show of salaciousness that Loki chokes on air, and then the Grandmaster’s fingers are sliding slick against his entrance, and _God_ , it is different indeed to the press into his anus. Whereas that had been a strangely pleasurable invasion, this, why, this is something else indeed: he feels as the butter through which the hot knife slides, feels himself open eagerly for the touch of the Grandmaster’s fingers, and his hips stutter up for more. His member remains oversensitive, simultaneously anxious and eager, and he wonders if it will hurt him to find his pleasure once again.

“Say, _Fuck me, Daddy,_ and I will.” Loki’s lips part.

“That word has _never_ passed my lips,” he says, surprised by the indignation in his own voice. “I would— I would not—” The Grandmaster’s finger does something _inhuman_ , the two fingers pressed against the base of Loki’s member _convulsing_ , much like the ground during some earthquake, juddering against him, and Loki cries out, arching, and orgasm in this form is different indeed: he feels his cunny clench, feels it slick as tremors run through all the organ’s sensitive flesh, and his member spits weakly upon his belly. The spend is _pink_. Loki drags his fingers through it even as he feels himself quake with aftershocks, peering at it on his fingertips, and the Grandmaster grins.

“Taste it,” he says.

“Is that the ultimatum I am being offered? Beg for your attentions with _foul_ words, or taste my own spend?”

“Uh huh.”

“Fuck me, Daddy,” Loki says dryly, without feeling, and the Grandmaster _crows_ his delight, sliding home. It punches a noise out of him, the way the Grandmaster parts his folds as if he is _meant_ to be here, a searing hot key in a freezing cold lock, as if they are two parts of a greater whole, and Loki sighs, tipping his head back onto the cushion. Hazy as he is, with _three_ orgasms behind him – three! –  he almost wants to let his eyes close, let himself relax, but then, oh, God, _then_ , that strange vibration the Grandmaster had so brought him over the edge with begins in earnest inside him, oscillating within his very _core,_ and Loki convulses, choking on little more than air. “No, no, Grandmaster, that’s too much, that’s too much—” And oh, how it is, radiating out over his sensitive body and making him squirm and try to struggle away, but the Grandmaster grabs hold of him and pulls him, _bodily_ , into the Grandmaster’s lap.

He drops back onto the bed, lying on his back, and Loki is impaled upon him with his own weight, so dizzy with pleasure he knows not which way is up and which is down. He is aware that he is wailing, letting out whining, whimpering sounds like a cat in heat, and the Grandmaster smiles up at him as if he is innocent of his part in this, as if his member is not serving to make Loki _drip_ with pleasure, and Loki grinds himself down into that awful pleasure-pain despite himself, unable to resist.

Faeries, _Faeries_ , they know not of temperance, or abstinence, or chastity: there is only ecstasy in pure hedonism, and here it is.

When Loki comes, thrown over the edge of passion by those _awful_ vibrations, he screams so loudly that the cave walls _shudder_ , and the water behind him begins to bubble and boil, magic hot upon his flesh and the Grandmaster is grinding up against him, saying, “Yes, yes, that’s it, that’s it, honey, let it all out—”

Power surges in his veins, crackling upon the air, and Loki leans in, acting on pure, overwhelmed instinct: he bites hard at the flesh of the Grandmaster’s shoulder, his abruptly sharp teeth digging deep into the skin and muscle. The Grandmaster’s blood has a sour tang, and Loki moans against his flesh, digging his fingernails into the Grandmaster’s hips, dragging his tongue over the Grandmaster’s neck. There is no thought, now, for appearances – Loki is hungry, and sated, and hungry again.

The Grandmaster’s spend does not cause him to swell and ache this time: instead, it merely washes searingly hot against his cool walls and serves to make him groan, still grinding himself down, still seeking out _more_. The Grandmaster’s finger is reaching behind him, and then— “ _Ungh_.” The Grandmaster’s fingers press into the slick passage of Loki’s backside, pressing in, his cock ( _yes_ , a part of him seethes, _yes, his cock, his cock!)_ still hot within him.

“Can you come again?” he asks. “Again? Do it again, come on, baby, you can do it—” Loki is scarcely even aware of the way he shakes his head, so dizzy and pleasure-drunk is he, but a third finger is sliding into his back channel, and the Grandmaster’s cock is bleeding magic into him, so much magic that Loki feels it sizzle and hiss in his veins, burning his blood.

Loki’s final spend comes with tired muscles that try desperately to milk the Grandmaster’s fingers and cock all at once, and it _hurts_ , wrenches something deep within him to pieces, until Loki flops forward, exhausted. He lies against the Grandmaster, the Faerie King’s softening cock still within him, and he stares uncomprehending at the wound on the Grandmaster’s shoulder, open and bleeding pure gold—

The wound he had left.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and he moves without thinking: his fingers slide over the bite, to heal it, but the Grandmaster’s hand grips his wrist.

“No, no,” he murmurs. “Leave it.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“I hurt you, didn’t I?”

“Mmm,” Loki agrees, blissfully.

“Gee, kitten, you’re a real… Ha. I thought you’d be a bit more resistant than this, but you just—” The Grandmaster’s hand smacks against his buttock, jolting Loki on his cock, and a sound burns low in his throat, on the fence between desire and scorn. The pain in his buttock is genuine, burning on the flesh, but it creeps under his skin, makes him _hot_. “You just take it like a champ, don’t you? And with that cute little act, aw, I don’t _want_ it. Of course you want it. You’re desperate for it.” The Grandmaster’s hands grasp Loki’s buttocks, pulling them apart, and Loki grits his teeth as warm air settles in his open pucker, even worse than the Grandmaster _lifts_ him, letting his cock slip out from Loki’s hungry cunt, and God, when had his thoughts become so indecent? So profane? “You’re just a slattern waiting to be trained, a Faerie whore. How’s that sound?”

“I want to sleep,” Loki mutters against the Grandmaster’s sternum. “Is that so much to ask?” The next spank comes right against Loki’s hole, making him cry out, but then the Grandmaster’s fingers soothe over the sore spot.

“You sleep, honey,” the Grandmaster murmurs softly. “You sleep.” And Loki, with exhaustion in his every limb, is unable to do anything else. He feels the strange heat of the Grandmaster against him, presses his face to the pillow of the Grandmaster’s lightly-haired breast, and lets sleep take him.

He doesn’t dream. It’s almost a disappointment.

**Author's Note:**

> [This is the original textpost](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/post/173099110973/also-i-see-your-frostmaster-modern-era-mundane) I made about this series, and [this is an aesthetic post](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/post/173100903003/victorian-frostmaster-au) I made with this concept in mind.
> 
> This is a lot darker and nastier than stuff I've written before, but I'm super excited to play with it because there's a lot of potential for literary mixes here, and I've always been super interested in fae lore and the like. Please, do let me know what you think as you read! Feel free to drop me a [message on Tumblr](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/ask) if you want to chat about this fic or any of my others, as per the usual.


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